A Friend of Mr. Lincoln by Harrigan Stephen

Author:Harrigan, Stephen [Harrigan, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-02T08:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

LINCOLN’S VOICE WAS STRAINED from months of speaking and debating all around Illinois. His spirits were strained as well. “The last thing I want to do right now,” he confessed to Cage in a rasp as he tried to make himself heard above the conversational noise in the crowded space of the Presbyterian church, “is give another speech.”

All those days and nights of bad food and long horseback miles and dirty inns filled with snoring men showed in his appearance. He had lost weight again, of course, which had the effect of exaggerating his verticality, turning him into a lonely, shriveled human tree. He was wearing a once-good suit that had been much abused in his travels and had lost its drape and now hung on his thin body like a funereal sack.

The church had become a de facto public space ever since the assembly started meeting there until the final touches could be put on the statehouse. The gathering on this November night was a Whig victory celebration. Harrison had just decisively won the presidency over Van Buren. But for Lincoln the triumph was muted, since he had been determined not just to elect a president but to make sure the Whigs carried Illinois, and in the end the Whigs did not carry Illinois.

“So is she here?” he asked. His neck looked as long as a snapping turtle’s as it swayed back and forth over the crowd.

“I haven’t seen her.”

“I think I may have gotten myself a little bit embriggled with her.”

“Yes, that’s my impression.”

“It is? When did you talk to her? What did she say?”

But there was no time to answer him because Ned Baker had just taken the pulpit and was asking the crowd to welcome that great Whig stalwart and towering state legislative leader Abraham Lincoln.

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