Appendix

I. Tall Talk.

The following specimen comes from a Florida newspaper, about the year 1840:—
  As we were passing by the court-house, a real “screamer from the Nob,” about six feet four in height, commenced the following tirade:—“This is me, and no mistake! Billy Earthquake, Esq., commonly called Little Billy, all the way from North Fork of Muddy Run! I’m a small specimen, as you see, a remote circumstance, a mere yearling; but cuss me if I ain’t of the true imported breed, and I can whip any man in this section of country. Whoop! won’t nobody come out and fight me? Come out, some of you, and die decently, for I’m spileing for a fight, I hain’t had one for more than a week, and if you don’t come out I’m flyblowed before sundown, to a certingty. So come up to taw!

  “Maybe you don’t know who Little Billy is? I’ll tell you. I’m a poor man, it’s a fact, and smell like a wet dog; but I can’t be run over. I’m the identical individual that grinned a whole menagerie out of countenance, and made the ribbed nose baboon hang down his head and blush. W-h-o-o-p! I’m the chap that towed the Broad-horn up Salt River, where the snags were so thick that the fish couldn’t swim without rubbing their scales off!—fact, and if any one denies it, just let ’em make their will! Cock-a-doodle-doo!

  “Maybe you never heard of the time the horse kicked me, and put both his hips out of jint—if it ain’t true, cut me up for catfish bait! W-h-o-o-p! I’m the very infant that refused its milk before its eyes were open, and called out for a bottle of old Rye! W-h-o-o-p! I’m that little Cupid! Talk about grinning the bark off a tree!—’tain’t nothing; one squint of mine at a bull’s heel would blister it. O, I’m one of your toughest sort,—live for ever, and then turn to a white oak post. I’m the ginewine article, a real double acting engine, and I can out-run, out-jump, out-swim, chaw more tobacco and spit less, and drink more whiskey and keep soberer than any man in these localities. If that don’t make ’em fight (walking off in disgust) nothing will. I wish I may be kiln-dried, and split up into wooden shoe-pegs, if I believe there’s a chap among em that’s got courage enough to collar a hen!”

II. Tall Talk.

“Now,” said the general, “just look at that ar pony; he can’t run, nor he can’t trot, nor he can’t canter, nor he can’t walk, but—how he can rack! He’d lick lightning a hundred yards in a mile, and give it two the start. He’d be perfect pisen to a locomotive with the steam up to bustin’ pint, and the screechin’ whistle screwed down. Jist walk round and examine the article.”—‘The Cincinnati Miscellany,’ i. 165 (1845).

III. Tall Talk.

Well, I will walk tall into varmint and Indian; it’s a way I’ve got, and it comes as natural as grinning to a hyena. I’m a regular tornado, tough as a hickory, and long-winded as a nor’-wester. I can strike a blow like a falling tree, and every lick makes a gap in the crowd that lets in an acre of sunshine.—Id., ii. 342 (1846).

IV. Tall Talk.

‘If it had n’t been for our party,’ exclaimed Wiggins, in a loud voice, ‘that great American eagle that has flew ’d so long, and kivered our juvenil’ years with his wings—that eagle, feller citizens, that sleeps on the ragin tornado, and warms himself in the sun—that eagle, I say—that eagle! eagle! would now be as dead as a smelt, lying on his back, a-groaning for help!’—‘Puddleford,’ by H. H. Riley, p. 103 (1854).

V. Tall Talk.

Sir, we want elbow-room!—the continent—the whole continent—and nothing but the continent! And we will have it! Then shall Uncle SAM, placing his hat upon the Canadas, rest his right arm on the Oregon and California coast, his left on the eastern sea-board, and whittle away the British power, while reposing his leg, like a freeman, upon Cape-Horn! Sir, the day will—the day must come!—Knickerbocker Magazine, xlvi. 212 (Aug., 1855).

VI. Tall Talk.

An Illinois lawyer, in defending a thief, said to the jury: “True, he was rude, so air our bars. True, he was rough, so air our buffaloes. But he was a child of freedom, and his answer to the despot and tyrant was that his home was on the bright setting sun.”—San Francisco Call, Dec. 3, 1856.

VII. Tall Talk.

“Fellow-citizens, you might as well try to dry up the Atlantic Ocean with a broomstraw, or draw this ’ere stump from under my feet with a harnessed gad-fly, as to convince me that I ain’t gwine to be elected this heat. My opponent don’t stand a chance; not a sniff. Why he ain’t as intellectual as a common sized shad. Fellers, I’m a hull team with two bull-dogs under the wagon and a tar-bucket, I am. If thar’s anybody this side of whar the sun begins to blister the yea’th that can wallop me, let him show himself,—I’m ready. Boys, I go in for the American Eagle, claws, stars, stripes, and all; and may I bust my everlastin’ button-holes ef I don’t knock down, drag out, and gouge everybody as denies me!”—Oregon Weekly Times, June 19, 1858.

VIII. Life on the Frontier.

IX. A Colorado Girl.

They have some queer girls in Colorado. One of them, who resides in Cache la Poudre valley, has been receiving the attention of a young man for a year, but, becoming impatient at his failure to bring matters to a crisis, she resolved to ascertain his intentions. When he next called, she took him gently by the ear, led him to a seat, and said, “Bobby, you’ve been foolin’ round this claim for mighty near a year, en’ hev never yit shot off yer mouth on the marryin’ biz. I’ve cottoned to yer on the square clean through, an’ hev stood off every other galoot that has tried to chin in, an’ now I want yer to come to business or leave the ranch. Ef yer on the marry, an’ want a pard that’ll stick rite to yer till yer pass in yer checks, I’m yer hairpin; but ef that ain’t yer game, draw out an’ give some other feller a show for his pile. Now sing yer song, or skip out.” He sang.—Source uncertain.

X. Fighting the Tiger.

XI. A Duel in Texas.

A duel was lately fought in Texas by Alexander Shott and John S. Nott. Nott was shot and Shott was not. In this case it is better to be Shott than Nott. There was a rumor that Nott was not shot, and Shott avows that he shot Nott, which proves either that the shot Shott shot at Nott was not shot, or that Nott was shot notwithstanding. It may be made to appear on trial that the shot Shott shot shot Nott, or, as accidents with firearms are frequent, it may be possible that the shot Shott shot shot Shott himself, when the whole affair would resolve itself into its original elements, and Shott would be shot and Nott would be not. We think, however, that the shot Shott shot shot not Shott but Nott; though indeed it is hard to tell who was shot and who was not.—Source uncertain.

XII. Our Minister’s Sermon.

XIII. A Remarkable Cucumber.

Tradition tells of one Minnesota Granger who happened to be examining a cucumber just as the season of rapid growth set in. As he backed out to give it room, the growing vine followed him so rapidly that he took to his heels, but was soon overtaken. It grew all around him, tangled up his legs, and threw him down. Reaching in great haste for a knife to cut himself loose, he found that a cucumber had gone to seed in his breeches pocket.—J. H. Beadle, ‘Western Wilds,’ p. 608 (1878).

XIV. The Pike’s Peakers.

XV. Illinois as It Was.

A smart sprinkling of the inhabitants of Illinois are from New England, a heap from Kentucky, and the balance are John Bulls, Paddies, Pukes, Wolverines, Snags, Hoosiers, Griddle-Greasers, Buck-eyes, Corn-crackers, Pot-soppers, Hard Heads, Hawk Eyes, Rackensacks, Linsey-Woolseys, Greenhorns, Whigs, Conservatives, Canada Patriots, Loafers, Masons, Anti-masons, Mormons, and some few from the Jarseys. The Loafers are perfectly peaceable; the Mormons and politicians wrathy, and fond of hunting, cock-fighting, and getting into trouble in order to get out again.—Olympia Pioneer: from the Bangor Mercury of 1845.

XVI. Old Grimes.

By Albert G. Greene (1802–68).

The Microscope, Albany, May 29, 1824: from The Providence (R.I.) Gazette.

XVII. Irrigating and Fumigating.

An elderly gentleman from the East took the stage from Denver south, in ante-railroad days. The journey was not altogether a safe one, and he was not re-assured by the sight of a number of rifles deposited in the coach, and nervously asked what they were for.

“Perhaps you’ll find out before you get to the divide,” was the cheering reply.

Among the passengers was a particularly fierce looking man, girded with a belt full of revolvers and cartridges, and clearly a road-agent or an assassin. Some miles out, this person, taking out a large flask, asked “Stranger, do you irrigate?”

“If you mean drink, sir, I do not.”

“Do you object, stranger, to our irrigating?”

“No, sir,” and they drank accordingly.

After a further distance had been traversed, the supposed brigand asked, “Stranger, do you fumigate?”

“If you mean smoke, sir, I do not.”

“Do you object, stranger, to our fumigating?”

“No, sir,” and they proceeded to smoke.

At the dining-place, when our friend came to tender his money, the proprietor said, “Your bill’s paid.”

“Who paid it?”

“That man,”—pointing to the supposed highwayman, who, on being asked if he had not make a mistake, replied, “Not at all. You see, when we saw that you didn’t irrigate and didn’t fumigate, we knew that you was a parson. And your bills are all right so long as you travel with this crowd. We’ve got a respect for the church, you bet.” It was no highwayman, but a respectable resident of Denver.—Ab. 1880: Source uncertain.

XVIII. The Original “Dixie.”

The New Orleans Times-Democrat gives it thus:—

XIX. A Card from a Georgia Widow.

Mr. Editor, I desire to thank the friends and neighbors most heartily in this manner for their co-operation during the illness and death of my late husband, who escaped from me by the hand of death on last Friday, while eating breakfast. To my friends and all who contributed so willingly toward making the last moments and the funeral of my husband a success, I desire to remember them kindly, hoping these lines will find them enjoying the same blessings. I have also a good milch cow and roan gelding horse, eight years old, which I will sell cheap.

“God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.”

Also a black and white shoat very low.—Griffin (Ga.) Call, about 1889.

XX. The Thanksgiving Dinner.

XXI. A Queer Marriage Ceremony.

“I hate to see a hitch in a weddin’,” remarked a farmer, as he dropped into the counting-room with a nuptial notice. “It looks bad, an’ it makes talk.”

“Anything wrong about this wedding?” asked the clerk, as he made change for the old man.

“Nothin’ positively wrong, but it didn’t launch like I want to see things o’ that kind. You seen by the notice that Buck Thomas was marryin’ Mary Bliff, an’ at one time we began to think they never would get through.”

“What was the hitch?”

“Why, Buck is a Methodis’, an’ Mary is a ’Piscopalian, an’ as one wanted one service an’ the other another, they patched up some kind of a scheme to have both. Neither would go to the other’s church, but each had their own minister, an’ the weddin’ come off in the school-house. The ’Piscopal minister married Mary, an’ the Methodis’ undertook to marry Buck, an’ there they was a-takin’ alternate whacks at the thing, an’ neither payin’ any attention to the other. The Methodis’ brother fired off a sermon first, an’ the bride sat down an’ went to sleep. Then the ’Piscopalian said as how we’d all dropped in to see that woman j’ined, but he wouldn’t say who to, an’ wanted to know if there was any objections. That started up the Methodis’, who began to ask Buck if he knew what a solemn business he was a peggin’ at, an’ if he really meant trade. All that time the ’Piscopalian was hoverin’ around about ‘this woman,’ an’ Mary was sayin’ she’d do this an’ that an’ the other. The Methodis’ minister was marryin’ away on his side, an’ finally they brought up agin a stump.”

“How’s that?” asked the clerk.

“Well, the ’Piscopalian wouldn’t recognize Buck or his minister, an’ the Methodis’ wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with Mary or her preacher, an’ there was no way of gittin’ ’em together. Everythin’ was all ready, except askin’ them if they’d take each other, and neither one of ’em would do it. Mary an’ Buck was standin’ hand in hand, an’ the crowd was gittin’ hungry.”

“How did they get through it?”

“They had to compromise. They wrangled for a time, an’ finally Buck spoke up of his own accord, an’ said he’d take Mary for his wedded wife, an’ then Mary chipped in an’ said she’d take Buck for her husband. At that we all cheered an’ hollered. But there they plumped on another snag.”

“In what respect!” inquired the clerk.

“Because there was no one to pronounce ’em man and wife. Buck tried to reason Mary into lettin’ the Methodis’ do that part, an’ Mary argued with Buck an’ tried to persuade him into listenin’ to her preacher; but it was no use. That brought on another row, an’ as it was gittin’ nigh on to dark, we all felt that somethin’ ought to be done, as we’d been there most all day.”

“Well, did they get married?” ask the tired clerk.

“Yes, we fixed it up. The ministers was gittin’ pretty mad at each other, but they agreed that they’d each attend to their own flock, so the Methodis’ said, ‘I now pronounce you man,’ and the ’Piscopalian said, ‘I now pronounce you wife,’ an’ they let it go at that. Then Buck paid the Methodis’, and the ’Piscopalian wanted to know where he came in. Buck said he’d hired his man an’ paid him, an’ as he was not responsible for his wife’s foolishness before marriage, her parson could whistle for his wealth. I guess there’ll be a lawsuit about it, for the ’Piscopalian says he’ll have half o’ that fi’ dollars if it takes a leg off to the armpit. I don’t like to see them hitches at weddin’s. It don’t look right, an’ it ain’t business.” With this reflection the old man buttoned up his change, and drove home in deep meditation.”—Brooklyn Eagle, about 1880.

XXII. Mullins the Agnostic.

XXIII. Wedding Remarks.

XXIV. Texas Words.

A fish spear is to him [a Texan] a groin; a boat, a dugout; a halter, a bosaal; a whip, a quirt; a house, no house, but a log-pen; a drove of horses, a caviarde, and when a universal fright among them occurs, it is a stampede.—S. A. Hammett (‘Philip Paxton’), (1853), p. 117–8.

XXV. Southernisms.

What parallel is to be found in the North for such a corruption as the southern use of the words right, mighty, and so forth? as right smart, right lazy, right nice, right hungry, right happy, and right miserable; mighty small, mighty big, mighty honest, mighty mean, mighty handsome, and mighty ugly. The Northerners have no such use of words as these; neither do they ever talk about “a smart chance” for a probability, nor “a smart chance of a sprinkling” as an ironical mode of expressing a good many. The people of the North never say inquiry instead of the English word inquiry, as do the people from all parts of the South. A Southerner says “like you do” for as you do, “like the man did” for as the man did.—Boston Pearl, Feb. 20, 1836. [Right as an adverb is good old English.]

The New Englander guesses, the Virginians and Pennsylvanians think, the Kentuckian calculates, the man from Alabama reckons.—Spirit of the Times, Philadelphia, Sept. 30, 1844. [This is drawing the lines much too close.]

XXVI. Consolatory Ode.

Addressed to Miss Magpie, on reading the following melancholy intelligence, in the Gazette of the United States:—

  “The Prairie Dog we are sorry to announce died suddenly at the city of Washington, (we have not learned upon what day and hour,) and its remains have arrived safe in this city, [Philadelphia,] and are deposited in the Museum.—Whether the administration went into mourning on the occasion, is not stated; nor have we heard how Miss Magpie, the travelling companion of Master Prairie Dog, bears her solitary and widowed situation.”

By ROBERT RUSTICOAT, ESQUIRE.

^*_*^* The Prairie Dog and the Magpie were sent by Capt. M. Lewis, the explorer of the West, to Mr. Jefferson. Incidental allusions refer to the President’s philosophical pursuits, and to the cession of Louisiana by Napoleon.

XXVII. Jeffersonian Ideas Ridiculed.

XXVIII. A High Old Time.

“I’ve had five breezes, seven blow-outs, nine shindies, and a dozen ructions, on this $1 Relief note, not at all mentioning the extra treats in the way of greasers, brandy rovers, gin-jumpers, and tickle-me-in-the-gaslight whiskey punches.”—Phila. Spirit of the Times, Feb. 15, 1842.

XXIX. Tall Talk.

Eulogy of John C. Calhoun by Mr. Albert G. Brown of Mississippi, in the House of Representatives, April 17, 1840: Cong. Globe, p. 390, App.:—

And how—how, sir, shall I speak of him—he who is justly esteemed the wonder of the world, the astonisher of mankind? Like the great Niagara, he goes dashing and sweeping on, bidding all created things give way, and bearing down, in his resistless course, all who have the temerity to oppose his onward career. He, sir, is indeed the cataract, the political Niagara of America; and, like that noblest work of nature and of nature’s God, he will stand through all after time no less the wonder than the admiration of the world. His was the bright star of genius that in early life shot madly forth, and left the lesser satellites that may have dazzled in its blaze to that impenetrable darkness to which nature’s stern decree had destined them; his the mighty magazine of mind, from which his country clothed herself in the armor of defence; his the broad expansive wing of genius, under which his country sought political protection; his the giant mind, the elevated spotless mien, which nations might envy, but worlds could not emulate. Such an one needs no eulogium from me, no defence from human lips. He stands beneath a consecrated arch, defended by a lightning shut up in the hearts of his countrymen—by a lightning that will not slumber, but will leap forth to avenge even a word, a thought, a look, that threatens him with insult. The story of his virtuous fame is written in the highest vault of your political canopy, far above the reach of grovelling speculation, where it can alone be sought upon an eagle’s pinions and gazed at by an eagle’s eye. His defence may be found in the hearts of his countrymen; his eulogium will be heard in the deep toned murmurs of posterity, which, like the solemn artillery of heaven, shall go rolling along the shores of time until it is ingulfed in the mighty vortex of eternity. Little minds may affect to despise him; pigmy politicians may raise the war cry of proscription against him; be it so; insects buz around the lion’s mane, but do not arouse him from his lair. Imprecations will add but other links to the mighty chain that binds him to his countrymen; and each blast of your war trumpet will but awaken millions to his support.

[Mr. Calhoun ever read these remarks, which were not spoken, but written “for Buncombe,” he must have ejaculated, “Save me from my friends.”]

XXX. The Harrison Campaign of 1840.
(Described by an OHIO DEMOCRAT.)

How were the fearless and honest expose (sic) of principles, on the part of the Democracy, met? Why, sir, by drunken orgies, that would have disgraced a Bacchanalian feast; by empty unmeaning pageants; ridiculous displays of log cabins, beset in coon skins, fox tails, old goards, empty barrels, shot pouches, and snapping turtles; and by other displays, unworthy of the age, disgraceful to any people, and an insult to every understanding of morality and decency. Or, in the language of my poet:

… The Abolitionist and the Slave holder, the bank man and the anti-bank man, the high tariffite and the anti-tariffite, the distributionist and the anti-distibutionist, the assumptionist and the anti-assumptionist, though all antipodes to each other, were united against the Democracy.—Mr. Duncan in the House of Representatives, Jan. 25, 1841: Cong. Globe, p. 153, App.

XXXI. Another Description of the Same.

I am reciting the simple history of the times; when no Whig gentleman considered himself properly adorned with the ensigns of his party, unless he carried a cane with a miniature hard cider barrel for its head, or an umbrella similarly adorned; when no paper was fit to be written upon, unless it had the impress of a log cabin at the head of the sheet. You, Mr. Speaker, well recollect the disgusting spectacles which were exhibited in the main street in this city. No person could go from this Capitol to the President’s House, without having his eyes greeted with at least two log cabins with all the splendid decorations of coon skins, bear traps, broken bush hooks, old saddles with one stirrup, and divers other emblems so dearly loved and so warmly cherished by the Bank aristocracy and city Whigery (sic).—Mr. Eastman of New Hampshire in the House of Representatives, Dec. 28, 1841: id., p. 49, App.

XXXII. The British Lion and the American Eagle.

[During the debate on the Oregon question] those convenient sources of poetic fancy, the American eagle and the British lion, have been so often drawn upon, that the roar of the one and the scream of the other now fall powerless [on our ears]. From the apex of the Alleghany to the summit of Mount Hood, the bird of America has so often been made to take flight, that his shadow may be said to have worn a trail across the basin of the Mississippi; and the poor lord of the beasts has become so familiar with the point of a hickory pole and of an ash splinter, that he has slunk away to his lair, and there let him lie for the balance of my allotted hour.—Mr. Cathcart of Indiana in the House of Representatives, Feb. 6, 1846: id., p. 322.

XXXIII. Antifogmatics.

Popular Remedies against External and Internal Fogginess.

Genus 1st. GUM TICKLER warms the gums, and removes bad taste from the mouth after sleeping.

Species 1st. Glass of Gin.
” 2nd. Dram of Bitters.
” 3d. Raw slings, or any other good stuff.
” 4th. Small horn of distilled cordial.

Genus 2d. PHLEGM CUTTER.
Species 1st. Egg-nogg made pure.
” 2nd. Mint julep stiff.
” 3d. Brandy-sling, pretty well to the northward.
” 4th. Holland twist, not too weak.

Genus 3d. GALL BREAKER.
Species 1st. Grog (rum and water).
” 2d. Flip (rum and beer) heated with the red poker until it foams.
” 3d. Sampson, rum and cider stewed over the coals.
” 4th. Toddy, grog and sugar with pulp of roasted apples.
” 5th. Punch, toddy with lemon juice.
” 6th. Bishop, rum and wine.
” 7th. Doctor, rum and milk, diffusible and permanent stimuli.
” 8th. Cocktail, rum and honey.

Genus 4th. CLEAR COMFORTER.
Species 1st. Tincture of bark, by the gill.
” 2d. Spiced wine, with ginger, hot and qualified with whisky.
” 3d. Cure-all, rum and brandy, fourth proof, equal parts, heated so as to simmer, and stewed, with a spoonful of red pepper to take off the chills.”—Lancaster Journal (Pa.), Jan. 26, 1821.

XXXIV. “Sheep Men” in Montana.

Talking about sheep men reminds me of Joe, the big bronco-buster, and his mot. I was doing the town with Joe, and he was carefully educating me in all the Western mysteries.

He told me about “day-wranglers” and “night-hawks” and “war-bags” and “roundups”; showed me how to tie a “bull-noose” and a “sheep-shank” and a “Mexican hackamore”; put me on to the twist-of-the-wrist and the quick arm-thrust that puts half-hitches round a steer’s legs; showed me how a cowboy makes dance music with a broom and a mouth-harp—and many other wonderful feats, none of which I can myself perform.

I wanted to feel the mettle of the big typical fellow, and so I said playfully: “Say, Joe, come to confession—you ’re a sheep man, now, are n’t you?”

He clanked down a glass of long-range liquid, glared down at me with a monitory forefinger pointing straight between my eyes. “Now, you look here, Shorty,” he drawled; “you ’re a friend of mine, and whatever you say, goes, as long as I ain’t all caved in! But you cut that out, and don’t you say that out loud again, or you and me ’ll be having to scrap the whole out-fit!”

He resumed his glass. I told him still playfully that a lot of mighty good poetry had been written about sheep and sheep men and crooks and lambs and things like that, and that I considered my question complimentary.

“You ’re talkin’ about sheep men in the old country, Shorty,” he drawled. “There ain’t any cattle ranges there, you know. Do you know the difference between a sheep man in Scotland, say, and in Montana?”

I did not.

“Well,” he proceeded, “over in Scotland when a feller sees a sheep man coming down the road with his sheep, he says: ‘Behold the gentle shepherd with his fleecy flock!’ That ’s poetry. Now in Montana, that same feller says, when he sees the same feller coming over a ridge with the same sheep: ‘Look at that crazy blankety-blank with his woollies!’ That ’s fact. You mind what I say, or you ’ll get spurred.”—Putnam’s Magazine, vii. 454–5 (Jan., 1910).

XXXV. Frequency of Titles in the U.S.

Almost every one whom we mention is dignified with a title. But that is an American characteristic. Go into a country town in New England, and, at guess call every third person esquire; every fourth one captain; every fifth one major; every sixth one colonel; and so on to the end of the chapter. It will be a matter of surprise to the inhabitants how you should know them all by name.—‘Lowell Offering,’ iv. 52 (1843).

XXXYI. A Mixed Cohhdnitt.

  Hodg. … What sort of people have you out there?
  Phil. Waal, we’ve got some o’ most all kinds: Pukes, Wolverines, Snags, Hoosiers, Griddle-greasers, Buck-eyes, Corn-crackers, Pot-soppers, Hard-heads, Hawk-eyes, Rackensacks, Linsey-woolseys, Red-horses, Mud-heads, Green-horns, Canada Patriots, Loafers, Masons, Anti-Masons, Mormons, and some few from the Jarseys.—J. K. Paulding, ‘American Comedies,’ p. 192 (Phila., 1847).

XXXVII. Tall Talk by an Abolitionist.

We hear about keeping step to the music of the Union. Sir, go build a huge organ on the shelving sides of the Rocky Mountains, and let the angel of liberty strike its keys and chant forth that sublime and grand old anthem of universal freedom; and then, as its notes roll over the land, solemn and majestic, in God’s name, sir, I will keep step to the music of the Union. It is a divine symphony. But when you call upon me to keep step to the sound of clanking chains, and of human manacles, to the wild shriek of human agony and suffering, I cannot do it. It grates upon me like the very dissonance of hell.—Mr. Owen Lovejoy of Illinois, House of Repr., Feb. 17, 1858: Cong. Globe, p. 754.

XXXVIII. The Eagle Screams.

The proudest bird upon the mountain is upon the American ensign, and not one feather shall fall from her plumage here. She is American in design, and an emblem of wildness and freedom. I say again, she has not perched herself upon American standards to die here. Our great western valleys were never scooped out for her burial place. Nor were the everlasting, untrodden mountains piled for her monument. Niagara shall not pour her endless waters for her requiem; nor shall our ten thousand rivers weep to the ocean in eternal tears. No, sir, no. Unnumbered voices shall come up from river, plain, and mountain, echoing the songs of our triumphant deliverance, wild lights from a thousand hill-tops will betoken the rising of the sun of freedom.—Mr. Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, U.S. Senate, May 5, 1862: id., p. 1940/1.

XXXIX. Knickerbockers and Yankees.

The enterprise of our sister Troy [N.Y.] has long been proverbial; but she must now yield her long established reputation to our good city of North Gotham.—Yes, ye dull-minded Trojans—ye scheming yankees—ye castle-building visionaries—ye wheat-buying speculators—ye pork-packing rapscallions—that have used all fair means to gather up the siller—you must now hide your diminished heads—for our venerable sturgeon-loving, yankee-hating, pipe-smoking burgomasters have beat you all hollow. Ye gods, who would have thought it! The spirit of good old Mynheer Van Twiller must chuckle at seeing the yankees outdone in speculation by the descendants of his loins.—The Microscope, Albany, N.Y., May 22, 1824, p. 43/1.

^*_*^* “North Gotham” is Albany.

XL. Tall Talk from Ohio.

Sir, light up the pathway of your Army with cities in bonfire. Strew your road, not with the branches of the palm in honor of God-given victories, but scatter beneath the progress of your eagles the child whom you have dashed against the wall, the dishonoured bodies of women whom you have slain, and the wounded whom you have consumed in those sanctuaries of misfortune and helplessness which even war consecrates to these. Let the measured steps of your cohorts be taken to the music to which the Roman eagles were carried when “in Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping and great mourning.” Ay, sir, let Liberty herself, as she is carried at the head of your triumphant battalions, not wear the vesture and crown and scepter, emblems of her majesty and purity; but drape her in garments dipped in the blood of the innocents; bind on her brow of alabaster a crown of nightshade, and put into her lily fingers some cup of hemlock, and let all these be symbols of the war waged by the Army of the Republic for Law, but waged without Law.—Speech of Mr. Samuel Shellabarger in the House of Repr., Feb. 24, 1862: Cong. Globe, p. 934/1. (The whole effusion is bombastic.)

XLI. The Greatness of the American Union.

—I shall never forget the impression of the greatness of my country, made on my mind the first day I took my seat in this House, as I listened to the roll-call of the States and Territories. Commencing in Maine, first answered the representatives of the people of New England, so distinguished for their education, their enterprise, their commerce, and their manufactures; next answered New York, an empire herself, through her thirty-three Representatives; and then Pennsylvania, the keystone of the Federal arch; and then, sweeping down the Atlantic coast, came the answer from that land of sunshine and flowers, where the cotton-bloom whitens their broad acres, and where grow the sugar-cane and rice. Then came the roll-call up the great valley of the Mississippi, and from that valley and the valleys of all its tributaries, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the northern lakes, were heard the responses of the Representatives of the people of great States and Territories; but still the roll-call proceeded, and, bounding over the Rocky mountains, called upon the States on the Pacific coast, and they answered through the Representatives of California and Oregon. Again there was a call, and the Delegate from far-off Washington Territory answered the summons. Around me sat the Representatives of all the great material interests of our country; of the hardy seamen who spread their sails on every ocean, of the cotton and woolen manufacturers, of the cunning workmen in brass and iron, of the great railroad interests, of the agricultural products, of the cattle on a thousand hills, and of the mines of iron, gold, and silver in our mountains. On my right sat a Representative who, in his home at midsummer, was chilled by the cold winds of the north, and on my left one around whose southern home the flowers bloom throughout the year. Here sat another, from our farthest eastern coast, who looked upon the sun as he rose fresh from the Atlantic to run his daily course, and there another who looked upon that sun as he gathered the robes of evening around him, and sunk [sank] to rest in the bosom of the Pacific. What a country! How great in extent! How vast in its resources! What a variety of soil, climate, and production!—Mr. W. M. Dunn of Indiana, House of Repr., April 23, 1862: id., p. 1792/2–3.

XLII. Abraham Lincoln Described.

In June, 1858, there came prominently before the country an actor, who, hitherto comparatively obscure, was soon to become the most prominent figure in American history. Abraham Lincoln was a plain, rough, sturdy pioneer of the West. Self-made and self-educated, a giant in frame, ungraceful and awkward in person, but kind and genial in disposition; a profound thinker, taking nothing on the opinions of others, but reasoning out his own convictions and conclusions; of great sagacity, of unblemished private character, of a truthfulness and honesty which had long established for him among the backwoodsmen, dressed in buckskin and Kentucky jeans, the familiar soubriquet of “Honest Old Abe.”

This man, whose sympathies were with the people, who loved liberty and detested slavery, called sneeringly by the aristocrats one of the “poor white trash,” now threw all his energies into the contest. His language possessed a plainness, quaintness, and clearness of illustration, and a rugged Anglo-Saxon style, wonderfully adapted to reach the sense and understanding of the common mind of the country. The training of this man for the great part he was to act in the drama of history was not in the schools. Perhaps it was better. From childhood he had been accustomed to struggle with and overcome difficulties. With the basis of perfect truth, candor, integrity, modesty, and sobriety, he acquired self-control, self-reliance, and the ability to use promptly a clear judgment and sound common sense.

His acquisitions in general knowledge and information were rarely surpassed. He studied and investigated every subject that required his action. He was a good lawyer, a good mechanic, a good farmer, and had a fund of practical information upon almost every subject. He studied Euclid and Shakspeare, as well as Blackstone, while travelling the circuit. He had served a single term in Congress, but his education, his preparation, was among the people in humble positions. He had seen life in various phases. He had been a flat-boatman, a rail-splitter, a surveyor, a private soldier in a campaign against the Indians, a member of the Legislature of Illinois, and a very successful lawyer among the log court-houses of the West. He had the advantage of competing at a bar where very able men were his competitors, and he always held a front rank. There gathered some twenty-five years ago, around the plain pine tables of the rude court-houses of central Illinois, a remarkable combination of men. Among them Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Lyman Trumbull, O. H. Browning, E. D. Baker, late the able and eloquent Senator from Oregon, the martyr of Ball’s Bluff; General James Shields, long Senator, who won a high reputation on the battle-fields of Mexico; General John H. Hardin, who fell on the bloody field of Buena Vista; James A. McDougall, Senator from California; Governor Bissell, one of the ablest statesmen of Illinois, and the eloquent representative whose defense of the gallant soldiers of that State drew a challenge from Jefferson Davis, then a member of Congress from Mississippi, which was accepted by Bissell, but the Mississippian did not fight, withdrawing his challenge under the influence of General Taylor. These, and many others equally able, were the men with whom Lincoln in his career at the bar was called to compete. [An account of the Lincoln-Douglas campaign follows, and one of the Chicago Convention of 1860.]—Mr. Isaac N. Arnold of Illinois, House of Repr., Feb. 20, 1865: Cong. Globe, pp. 69–70, App. [This was less than eight weeks before Mr. Lincoln was assassinated.]