The magazine of history with notes and queries (Vol. I, No. 2)Various
History
The magazine of history with notes and queries (Vol. I, No. 2)
Various
History -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- Periodicals
The redoubtable captain followed with a “crotch-holt,” but that terrible
device was resisted as easily as water runs from a duck’s back. A trick
called “sliding away,” was introduced, only to confirm the growing
opinion of the spectators that the doughty wrestler from Sangamon had
met his master.
A moment of indecision followed, the slipping of a mental cog, so to
speak,—just enough to allow the despised St. Clair man to get in his
fine work, and once more the legs of the valiant captain rose in the air
and both men fell to the ground in a heap.
“Dog fall!” yelled Lincoln’s men.
“Fair fall!” retorted Moore’s men.
A free fight was imminent, but Lincoln, disgruntled and defeated though
he was—in one fall at least—was a “good loser.” Springing to his feet
before the referee could act, he cried: “Boys! The man actually threw me
once fairly; broadly so, and this second time—this very fall, he threw
me fairly though not apparently so.” That settled the matter and the
frankness of the speaker saved him his reputation although his men had
lost all their available property.
On the 8th day of August, 1860, Professor Risdon Marshall Moore, then of
McKendree College (now of San Antonio, Texas), son of the referee,
Jonathan Moore, called upon Mr. Lincoln at the latter’s house in
Springfield with a delegation of college men, devotedly attached to Mr.
Lincoln’s cause. In introducing Prof. Moore, Lieutenant Governor Koerner
added, “of St. Clair County.”
Prof. Moore then stated: “Mr. Lincoln, we have called to see the next
President.” To which Mr. Lincoln replied: “You must go to Washington to
see the next President.”
During this and other conversation which followed, Mr. Lincoln eyed
Prof. Moore constantly with a suspicious twinkle of the eye, after which
he asked: “Which of the Moore families do you belong to? I have a grudge
against one of them.”
Professor Moore replied with a still merrier twinkle: “I suppose it is
my family you have the grudge against, but we are going to elect you
President and call it even.”
There were present at that meeting the same O. H. Browning who had
witnessed the match nearly thirty years before, Norman B. Judd, Richard
J. Oglesby and some others, to all of whom Mr. Lincoln related the story
as herein told, concluding with these words: “I owe that Moore family a
grudge, as I never had been thrown in a wrestling match until the man
from that company did it. He could have thrown a grizzly bear.”
Poor Thompson! He migrated to Harrison County, Missouri, and became its
first representative in the General Assembly of the State in 1846 and
was re-elected in 1848. He was also a member of the first grand jury of
the county. Politically he was called an anti-Benton Democrat. Positive
in all his convictions, he was called eccentric toward the end of his
life, but all who knew him testify that he was able, upright and a good
neighbor and citizen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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