McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 6, May, 1896 — John Shaqi
McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 6, May, 1896Various
General
McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 6, May, 1896
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
Lincoln's speeches at this time were not confined to his own State. He
made several in Indiana, being invited thither by prominent Whig
politicians who had heard him speak in Illinois. The first and most
important of his meetings in Indiana was at Bruceville. The Democrats,
learning of the proposed Whig gathering, arranged one, for the same
evening, with Lieutenant William W. Carr of Vincennes as speaker. As
might have been expected from the excited state of politics at the
moment, the proximity of the two mass-meetings aroused party loyalty to
a fighting pitch. "Each party was determined to break up the other's
speaking," writes Miss O'Flynn, in a description of the Bruceville
meeting prepared for this Magazine from interviews with those who took
part in it. "The night was made hideous with the rattle of tin pans and
bells and the blare of cow-horns. In spite of all the din and uproar of
the younger element, a few grown-up male radicals and partisan women
sang and cheered loudly for their favorites, who kept on with their flow
of political information. Lieutenant Carr stood in his carriage, and
addressed the crowd around him, while a local politician acted as grand
marshal of the night, and urged the yelling Democratic legion to surge
to the schoolhouse, where Abraham Lincoln was speaking, and run the
Whigs from their headquarters. Old men now living, who were big boys
then, cannot remember any of the burning eloquence of either speaker. As
they now laughingly express it: 'We were far more interested in the
noise and fussing than the success of the speakers, and we ran backward
and forward from one camp to the other.'
Fortunately, the remaining speeches in Indiana were made under more
dignified conditions. One was delivered at Rockport; another "from the
door of a harness shop" near Gentryville, Lincoln's old home in Indiana;
and a third at the "Old Carter School" in the same neighborhood. At the
delivery of the last many of Lincoln's old neighbors were present, and
they still tell of the cordial way in which he greeted them and of the
interest he showed in every familiar spot.
"'I was a young fellow,' Mr. Redmond Grigsby says, 'and took a long time
to get to the speaking. When I got to the out-skirts of the crowd, Mr.
Lincoln saw me, and called out: "If that isn't Red Grigsby, then I'm a
ghost." He then came through the crowd and met me. We shook hands and
talked a little. His speech was good, and was talked about for a long
while around in this section. The last words of his speech at the Carter
schoolhouse were: 'My fellow-citizens, I may not live to see it, but
give us protective tariff, and we will have the greatest country on the
globe.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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