The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3. Various
which are eleven Congregational, eight Methodist Episcopal, seven Baptist, seven Roman Catholic, three Protestant Episcopal, two Universalist, and two Unitarian churches.
On account of the encircling hills the climate of Worcester is hot in summer, but somewhat more temperate and less subject to east winds in winter than that of Boston.
The surrounding country has all the charms that cultivated soil and undulating hill-and-valley scenery can give. Good roads run in various directions to the adjacent towns, and strangers often speak of the many different and delightful drives to be found about Worcester.
Three miles east of the city is the beautiful sheet of water called Lake Quinsigamond. It is a narrow lake, about five miles long, with thickly wooded banks, and its surface dotted with picturesque little islands. Along its shores the Nipmuck Indians are said to have lived and hunted; and on Wigwam Hill, a wooded eminence overlooking the water, where one of their encampments is supposed to have been, are still occasionally found specimens of their rude house utensils.
A large tract of land bordering on the lake has lately been given to the city by two Worcester gentlemen, and it is expected that in the near future it will be cleared away and made into a public park. The only park that the city now possesses, besides the Common, before alluded to, is a small affair on the west side, at the foot of Elm street, one of the principal residence streets.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
There is something eminently satisfactory in the reflection that, when the new faith, "That all men are created equal," and that "Governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," was finally assailed by the slave-power of America, and had to pass the ordeal of four years of war, a man born and reared in poverty, deficient in education, unused to the etiquette even of ordinary society, and untutored in the art of diplomacy and deception, had been selected by the people of the United States to become the representative of the new faith, and the defender of the government established upon it. This man was Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, the record of whose life, at once important, eventful, and tragic, it is pleasant to recall.
There are, in my judgment, at least four men associated with the period of the civil war, who, in their early lives, their struggles, their training, and their future callings, ought forever to command the admiration of this people: Lincoln, the lowly, the exalted, the pure man in rude marble, the plain cover to a gentle nature, the giant frame and noble intellect; Grant, the defender of the Federal Union, the unflinching soldier, around whose dying couch a whole nation now lingers, whose light will shine down through future ages a warning to conspirators, to freemen a pledge, and to the oppressed a beacon of hope; Stanton, the lion of Buchanan's cabinet, the collaborator of Lincoln, the supporter of Grant, gifted with the far-seeing eye of a Carnot, spotless in character, incorruptible in integrity, great in talent and learning, and a fit object of unhesitating trust; and John Rogers, the American sculptor, who has offered, in his beautiful and famous group of statuary, "The Council of War," an undying tribute to these three great leaders in American history, and is himself worthy to be grouped with them in our remembrance.
"Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all—
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!"
If we could have looked into a rude log-cabin in Hardin county, Kentucky, on the morning of the 12th of February, 1809, we should have seen an infant just born,—and with what promise of future greatness? Looking ahead ten years, we should have discerned this infant, Abraham, developing into youth, still living in the old log-cabin, with neither doors nor windows, with wolves and bears for neighbors, with a shiftless father. But his mother was dead! Still this mother had left her impress, and she had become in that boy's heart "an angel of a mother." She made him what he afterwards proved himself to be. Follow Abraham Lincoln where we will,—from the cradle to the grave,—and we shall find honesty and kindness ever distinguishing him. In his boyhood, among boys, he was always fighting the battle of the offended and the weak; in manhood, he was always protecting the fugitive from an angry mob; as a lawyer, saving the widow's son from the gallows, and declining the rich fee of an unrighteous cause; as a public debater, the fairest ever met in the political arena; and as president of the republic, honest in his convictions and kind to his bitterest enemies.
Let us not forget the difficulties which it was his lot and his good fortune to surmount. He never was six months at school in his life; and yet, by the use of a single book and the occasional aid of a village schoolmaster, he became an expert surveyor in six weeks! At the age of twenty-one he accompanied his family to Illinois. One morning, when seated at the breakfast-table of his employer, Lincoln was told that a man living six miles away had a copy of an English grammar. He left the table at once, and went and borrowed the book. During the long winter evenings that followed, in the light of the village cooper's shop, he pored over the pages of that book,—studying the science of language, the theory of human speech, and qualifying himself to become the author of one of the three great State papers of modern times, by the light of burning shavings!
But we leave that early life of his, which, in rude simplicity, repeats "the short and simple annals of the poor."
In 1832 Black Hawk, the celebrated Indian chief, then in his sixty-seventh year, crossed the Mississippi to regain the Rock River valley,—the scene of his early trials and triumphs. His coming meant war upon the pale-faced stranger, that had ventured to possess the hunting-grounds of the red men. Several companies of volunteers were raised to meet him, and Abraham Lincoln served as captain of one of them.
When the war was over Lincoln returned to New Salem, his home in Illinois, and shortly afterwards began the study of the law. He was still poor in purse, his clothing was threadbare, but his ambition was immense. He often pursued his study in the shade of a tree. One day Squire Godbey—a very good man he was, too, so we are told—saw him seated on a pile of wood, absorbed in a book, when, according to the squire, the following dialogue took place: "Says I, 'Abe, what are you studying?'—'Law,' says he. 'Great God Almighty!' says I." Studying law astride of a wood-pile, probably barefooted, was too great a shock for the squire's susceptible nature. He continued to study, then to practise a little without fee, and finally was admitted to the bar in 1836.
Judge Davis, once on the Supreme Bench of the United States, a man spotless alike upon the throne of justice and in his daily walk, was upon intimate terms with Lincoln for upwards of twenty years, and during more than half of that period sat upon the judicial bench before which Lincoln most frequently practised. No one is abler than he to speak of Lincoln as a lawyer,—a lawyer who became one of the first of the Western bar,—a bar that can proudly point to its Carpenter, its Trumbull, its Ryan, and its Davis. He says:—
"The framework of Lincoln's mental and moral being was honesty; and a wrong cause was poorly defended by him. The ability which some eminent lawyers possess of explaining away the bad points of a cause by ingenious sophistry was denied him. In order to bring into full activity his great powers it was necessary that he should be convinced of the right and justice of the matter which he advocated. When so convinced, whether the cause was great or small, he was usually successful.
"He hated wrong and oppression everywhere; and many a man whose fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a court of justice has writhed under his terrific indignation and rebukes. He was the most simple and unostentatious of men in his habits, having few wants, and those easily supplied."
In 1837 Mr. Lincoln removed to Springfield, Ill., where he entered into partnership with his old friend, John T. Stuart; and this partnership continued until 1841. In 1834 he had been elected to the Legislature, and after his removal to Springfield he was again chosen to that body. It was during this period that he found the nerve, when it did require courage, to express and record his protest against the injustice of slavery. Twice as a youth he had made a trip to New Orleans,—in 1828 and 1831,—and on his second visit had for the first time observed slavery in its most brutal and revolting form. He had gone into the very centre of a slave mart, had seen families sold, the separation forever of husband and wife, of parent and child. When we recall how deeply he always sympathized