Old Abe

  OLD ABE

  FIRST EDITION

  Copyright 2020 John Cribb

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Though some characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are based on the historical record, and historical works such as speeches, letters, and reports are sometimes quoted, passim, the work as a whole is a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to other persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 9781645720164 (Hardcover)

  ISBN: 9781645720171 (ebook)

  For inquiries about volume orders, please contact:

  Republic Book Publishers

  501 Slaters Lane #206

  Alexandria VA 22314

  editor@republicbookpublishers.com

  Published in the United States by Republic Book Publishers

  Distributed by Independent Publishers Group

  www.ipgbook.com

  Cover designed by Laura Klynstra

  Interior designed by Mark Karis

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Images:

  American Civil War Era By Patricia Turner From Arcangel Images Inc

  Grand Review of the Armies at the end of the Civil War on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC May 1865. Color lithograph

  Contributor: North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo

  To Kirsten, Molly, and Sarah

  CONTENT

  Foreword by William J. Bennett

  Author’s notei

  PART 1: THE ASCENT

  May 1860 to February 1861

  PART 2: THE INFERNO

  March 1861 to January 1863

  PART 3: THE DISTANT SHORE

  January 1863 to April 1865

  Acknowledgments

  FOREWORD

  Thousands of books have been published about Lincoln—more than 15,000, according to one count several years ago. More, of course, have been added since. The vast majority are nonfiction. More books, it is said, have been written about Lincoln than any other person in history except Jesus Christ. But you must read this book.

  This is the best book about Abraham Lincoln I’ve ever read. Why? In most books about him, you learn something about his life and times, his policies, the Civil War, and so on. But in the end, there is still something unapproachable about him. He’s still that rigid, copper image staring toward the edge of the penny.

  This novel turns that copper face into a walking, talking, breathing fellow. And we walk right beside him, through the most catastrophic years in American history. John Cribb has brought Lincoln to life for us. We are with him for every blow and triumph of his journey and come to know his heart and soul as he fights to save the Union.

  In this novel, we pace the White House hallways with Lincoln, groping for answers. We stand with him over the hospital beds of wounded Union and Confederate soldiers, and we walk the streets of a smoldering, fallen Richmond with him, studying the faces of defeated countrymen.

  Old Abe bulges with epic scenes from American history, but it’s also full of those moments, sometime crushing, that make up life. The afternoons Lincoln sits alone in the bedroom where his son Willie died. The night he tries, without success, to dash inside the blazing White House stables to save his boys’ ponies. The day he realizes that all the destruction and loss is too much for Mary, his wife, and that they are slipping away from each other.

  I asked John Cribb why he wrote this book, and he said, “Because I love Lincoln, and I want others to know and love him, too.” That you will. This book makes you love Lincoln. We all know what happens to him in the end, but as the end draws near, you will not want it to happen, and you’ll weep for him when it does.

  Since his death, Lincoln has fascinated people, both in his own country and abroad. Leo Tolstoy once told a journalist from the New York World about a time he was traveling in a wild region of the Caucasus and stayed with a tribe of mountain horsemen. After sharing a meal, he told the chief and “a score of wild-looking riders” about famous statesmen and generals such as Napoleon.

  “When I declared that I had finished my talk,” Tolstoy related, “my host, a gray-bearded, tall rider, rose, lifted his hand and said very gravely:

  But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock and as sweet as the fragrance of roses…. His name was Lincoln, and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it, he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.

  “‘Tell us, please, and we will present you with the best horse of our stock,’ shouted the others.”

  Tolstoy told them of Lincoln’s wisdom, home life, and youth. “They asked me ten questions to one which I was able to answer. They wanted to know all about his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength…. After all my knowledge of Lincoln was exhausted they seemed to be satisfied. I can hardly forget the great enthusiasm which they expressed in their wild thanks…. This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become.”

  If a score of wild-looking riders in the remote Caucasus were so eager to learn about Lincoln, then surely we Americans should want to know him, too, even now in the twenty-first century when he often seems as far away as he did to those horsemen.

  Why is his life still so worth knowing?

  One answer is his deeds, deeds as “strong as the rock and as sweet as the fragrance of roses,” as the chieftain put it. He led the effort to save the Union and free the slaves. For those actions alone, he deserves to be studied and remembered.

  Another answer lies in the principles he defended, especially those enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, his favorite founding document. Growing up on the American frontier, he soaked up the ideals that all are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He fought for those ideals until his last breath.

  Lincoln once called America “the last best hope of earth,” a phrase I borrowed for the title of my history of the United States, America: The Last Best Hope, because it perfectly captures how millions have viewed this nation. Lincoln knew that throughout history, the vast majority of people had lived with little or no freedom under the rule of kings, emperors, and tyrants. He realized that the world had been waiting centuries for the kind of liberty America stood for. He believed that if the Union fractured and the American experiment failed, it would be a severe blow to worldwide hopes for freedom for a very long time. His wisdom regarding America and its principles is still worth learning.

  A third answer comes in the magnificent words he left behind. The late Lincoln scholar Don E. Fehrenbacher wrote that Lincoln’s words have become part of “the permanent literary treasure of the nation.” Generations of schoolchildren have memorized the Gettysburg Address. (One hopes that some still do.) Millions have stood enraptured at the Lincoln Memorial, in the shadow of the giant statue of the seated Lincoln, reading the words of the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address carved on the memorial’s walls. His words will live as long as the idea of America lives.

  The fourth answer to the question “Why know this man’s life?” is his life itself. Tolstoy said that Lincoln’s greatness “expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.” There is much to learn from the example of the virtues he embodied.

  His perseverance is awe inspiring. It was a trait he no doubt learned growing up on the frontier, where you either persevered or died. During the Civil War, he suffered through four years of loss and destruction. Many in the North were willing to give up. Not Lincoln. He used to compare himself to a man trying to keep a storm from blowing down his tent. He kept driving tent pegs into the ground as fast as the wind could pull them up. “I mean to keep pegging away, pegging away,” he told people.

  His boundless compassion was, I think, one reason he often struck people as looking sad. He reveled at any chance to pardon a soldier who had been court-martialed for falling asleep on duty or going home without leave to see his family. Slavery offended not only his great sense of justice, but his sense of compassion. It is no coincidence that the president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation was a man of tremendous empathy.

  He possessed a humble eagerness to learn. The boy who had less than a year of formal schooling really would walk miles on the Indiana frontier to lay his hands on a book. As president, he borrowed books from the Library of Congress to study up on military tactics. He was a great listener and chose his cabinet, which included political rivals, in part because he knew they were men from whom he could learn.

  We can’t say that the man called Honest Abe never told a lie, but he was a man of the highest integrity. As a young fellow, he famously walked several miles to return six and a quarter cents overpaid by a customer at the store where he clerked. A bit later, when a little general store he co-owned went belly-up, he repaid every penny of his debt, even though it took several years. When the Civil War went badly, political enemies called him confused, incompetent, out of his league. But
his allies knew that he was a good, decent man, and that helped them be sure they were fighting for a cause that was good and decent.

  He was a man of great faith, even though he never formally joined a church. He knew the Bible perhaps better than any president before or since and turned to it frequently in the White House. As the war deepened, he came to view himself as a “humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty.” His faith not only gave him strength; at war’s end it gave him the wisdom to tell Northerners that the time had come not for revenge, but for charity.

  This is the man we find in the pages of this wonderful novel, a giant of a man, but also a real man, the man those wild riders in the Caucasus wanted to know.

  In the past few decades, there has been a strong inclination in American letters to knock great figures off their pedestals, often, it seems, for no other reason than to see them shatter. Old Abe is something different. It portrays Lincoln as a flesh-and-blood man but also a great man—the great American hero who embodies this country’s finest ideals. And that, I believe, is exactly who he was.

  As Tolstoy said, “He was great through his simplicity and was noble through his charity. Lincoln is a strong type of those who make for truth and justice, for brotherhood and freedom. Love is the foundation of his life. That is what makes him immortal and that is the quality of a giant.”

  In these pages, as we grow close to Lincoln, we come to know his deeds, his words, and those principles he so fiercely defended. Most of all, we come to know his life and his virtues. He was not a perfect man, but he was a darned good one. And darned good men are worth knowing and loving.

  As Lincoln’s journey unfolds, Old Abe chronicles the times in which he lived. It probes the character and spirit of America. This is a story that involves much suffering and loss, but in the end it is a hopeful story, both for Lincoln and the nation.

  We live in a time in which many Americans feel uncertain about the future and worry about the direction the country is headed. Distrust of major institutions is at historic highs. People yearn for true leaders. They will find such a leader in this novel—one of the greatest American leaders, the one who set the country on track to becoming a great nation.

  —WILLIAM J. BENNETT

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. There are many fine biographies of Abraham Lincoln, but because of nonfiction’s constraints, they can go only so far in portraying his thoughts and feelings. I’ve chosen to tell Lincoln’s story through fiction so you and I can step into his world, walk with him, and intimately know this extraordinary man.

  Though this is a novel, I’ve tried to give an accurate depiction of Lincoln in the last five years of his life. I’ve turned to hundreds of primary and secondary sources, drawing on the words of Lincoln and his contemporaries when possible. For example, in the first chapter, when I write that the Illinois Republicans picked him up and passed him hand-to-hand over their heads to the front of their makeshift convention hall in Decatur, and that Lincoln says the split rails his cousin John Hanks brought to the convention “don’t look like they’re a credit to their maker,” it’s because an eyewitness tells us that is what happened. In many cases, I’ve taken artistic license to provide details of action and dialogue, and I’ve occasionally bent the timeline for minor events, but I’ve tried to stay faithful to the historical record.

  I hope this book brings Lincoln to life and that it helps you better understand the tragic circumstances he faced and the heroic service he rendered to a nation that seemed hopelessly divided.

  PART ONE

  THE ASCENT

  May 1860 to February 1861

  CHAPTER 1

  MAY 9, 1860

  He squatted on his heels at the back of the huge Wigwam, head down, whittling on a pine stick while three thousand farmers and shopkeepers whooped for joy around him. Men jostled past each other in the aisles of the convention hall, which the citizens of Decatur had thrown together with a few sticks of lumber and a rented circus tent. A blacksmith with too much corn whiskey in his belly climbed one of the poles holding up the Wigwam’s canvas roof and shouted that he could see the Promised Land. Nearby, a miller and a grocer started a good-natured brawl over the rights of man that ended with the blacksmith dropping an empty flask from atop the pole onto the grocer’s head.

  Outside, one or two thousand more people milled about Decatur’s streets, taking turns sticking their heads through the tent flaps to see what the Illinois Republicans were doing at their state convention.

  A booming, determined voice from the front of the hall broke over the crowd: “I am informed that a distinguished citizen of Illinois, one whom Illinois will ever delight to honor, is present, and I wish to move that this body invite him to a seat on the platform—Abraham Lincoln!”

  He barely had time to drop the pine stick before a dozen hands grabbed him and hoisted him into the air. A roar of assent shook the Wigwam’s timbers and set its canvas roof flapping. The next thing he knew, he was being passed forward, rolling and sprawling, hand-to-hand over laughing, upturned faces. He went dangling and turning to the platform, clutching his stovepipe hat and wondering if the tumultuous ride would make his undergarments show.

  More hands grabbed him and set him down on the stage. A tempest of cheering burst over three thousand heads. Hats went soaring to the roof as if men would never again need hats.

  “Speech! Speech!”

  He tried to say something, but the booming, determined voice that had called out his name beat him to it.

  “An old Democrat outside has something he wants to present to this meeting!” it announced.

  “Receive it! Receive it!” the delegates shouted.

  The crowd parted, and Abraham saw his cousin John Hanks enter the hall. For an instant, thirty years melted away, and it seemed like it was only yesterday that the two of them had been rough-hewn youths toiling beside the lazy Sangamon River and Decatur was little more than an unfinished log courthouse in a stump-filled clearing. Together they had split fence rails by the hundred and busted sod to plant corn on acres of hard-baked Illinois prairie. They had loaded a raft with pork, corn, and wheat and floated it down the Sangamon into the Illinois River and then down the great Mississippi itself all the way to New Orleans, just about the grandest adventure any frontier boy could hope to have.

  Now here came good old John Hanks marching down the aisle, sporting a bushy gray beard. Another grizzled farmer came with him. Each carried upright a gray fence rail decorated with red, white, and blue streamers. Stretched between the two rails was a banner reading, “Abraham Lincoln—The Rail Candidate for President in 1860.”

  Hats, canes, coats, and newspapers went flying into the air again. Men stamped their feet and pounded their seats so hard, part of the canvas roof came down on their heads.

  Abraham shook John’s hand while some of the delegates fixed the tent. His cousin’s face was weathered from seasons of burning suns and driving snows, but it was still the good, solid face Abraham had always known, with an honest gaze carved into it.

  “It took a while, but I found some of the fences we built still standing,” John grinned. “They asked me what kind of work you used to be good at. I told them not much of any kind but dreaming, though we did split a lot of rails when we were clearing land.”

  A chant rose from the crowd: “Identify your work! Identify your work!”

  Abraham blushed. “I don’t know that I can. That was a long time ago.”

  “Identify your work!”

  He examined the rails, peering through the colored streamers to see the wood.

  “What kind of timber are they?” he asked.

  “Honey locust and black walnut.”

  “They don’t look like they’re a credit to their maker.”

  “Identify your work!”

  “Well, boys, it may be that I mauled these rails. I can only say that I’ve split a great many better-looking ones.”

  There was enough screaming and shaking to put the whole roof in danger of falling, and heaven with it. Delegates shouted that Old Abe was the original Rail Splitter. They yelled to each other that his politics, like his rails, were straight and made of sound timber. Everyone whooped until they were hoarse, and then they set about passing a resolution that Abraham Lincoln was the choice of the Republican Party of Illinois to be president of all the United States.