Voices from the Past Part 139

Memories...it wasn't so long ago I tramped at the head of the ox team, as we moved from one place to another, one beginning that had not really ended, to another beginning that might not end. The oxen were faithful.

They meant much to me. I will not forget. They ate from my hands, they blew their breaths on my fingers, they regarded me intently. It rained on us. The sun shone on us.

July 11, 1863

Was it twenty or thirty years ago, we drifted down the Mississippi, three of us on a loaded flatboat? She was well overloaded because all of us wanted to get rich quick. The second or third day on the river, a tornado- like storm struck us; I thought we would lose more than our cargo. Down went the stern, down went the bow. I thought lightning would strike us. My friends, John H___ and John J___ , were experienced river men. With luck we made it. In New Orleans, we sold both cargo and flatboat, and returned home by sternwheeler.

Memories-one of the most vivid is the New Orleans'

slave auction: men and women for the highest bidder. How much is my mother worth? I asked myself. How much is my father? My Uncle James? Two women were sold while I watched at the corner of a busy street. Two women, then three men were sold. Were they friends, relatives? Did they speak our language? Where were they taken? One of the men in New Orleans left the auction stand in handcuffs. The women rode away in fancy buggies-faces haggard.

I have never had to summon a jury in defense of freedom. No court can defend slavery if men are honorable.

Tuesday evening

Late

As the months pa.s.s, as troubles increase, I hunt for moments from yesterday, moments that may strengthen me, moments that may prove I was once young. There is my Ann Rutledge. I see her auburn hair, blue eyes and delicate face-more than ephemera. My love for her is real, apart, unrelated to the man I am, yet remembered-a contradiction. Although it is a lie I feel that Ann is alive.

I allowed my burden of debts to turn me away from marriage. I believed that frontier hards.h.i.+ps were to remain my lot; I could not see harnessing her to a life of animal drudgery. Debts...they were like bars in a gate; I peered through those bars at her beautiful face.

We buried her among currant bushes, in the wind, in the sun. I left the cemetery to wander through hungry woodlands, woodlands I never saw again, that extended...I don't know how far they extended. Hunger and sorrow...they were mine.

All that remains of our brief relations.h.i.+p is the memory of her voice, as she spoke, as she sang. She loved to sing hymns and frontier songs-her voice so feminine.

The touch of her hand, the touch of her voice...in the midst of war, under desperate commitments.

Evening

We were to enroll. Ann was to enroll at Jacksonville Academy. I was to enroll at Illinois College.

That year I called on her at the Rutledge farm, several times. We worked together in the fields. When she worked at Jim Short's farm, I rode over to be with her. I helped her with the ch.o.r.es. Swampy place.

August came, hot, dry August. Corn was stunted that year. Few martins and swallows were around. But malaria was around and put me down, a day, two days, three. I sipped Peruvian bark-jalap. Late that month, her father sent for me.

Valued brother, come, Ann is very ill.

D. H. Rutledge.

I still have that message.

She lay on her bed, feverish; the log house seemed to be claiming her; she put her small hands in mine; her corn silk hair was around her face. In two days she was gone. We buried her in Concord, seven miles away, seven miles to walk behind her coffin.

It was many weeks, many weeks and miles of walking, before I recovered, out of that grey mystery.

I still write to her family. I want to know how the Rutledges are faring.

White House

In wagons, on foot, on horseback, they stream west, for the gold rush, for the promises. Ours is a migratory urge. Flux of men, women, children, reapers, sowers, which comes first? Which the most important? We Americans expropriate, accomplish, destroy. The rough rock becomes polished by time, but do we? Can such migrations achieve a true union?

I realize there is a power larger than self, more powerful than leaders.h.i.+p. It is this mysterious power that causes this human wave. It is not destiny. It is an interchange of ideas, a wave or waves of emotion, a desire for betterment-and beyond that! The pioneer has this in his mind, as he hacks at timber, removes stumps, sprouts corn. Deep inside me, like a blue pool, I am in accord with these frontiersmen.

White House

window wide open

August 1st, 1863

In Springfield, when problems got under my skin, I sometimes woke at night, puzzled, thinking where am I?

I'd find myself sitting up in bed, gesturing, talking to myself. Alarmed, I would dress and lay a fire and sit by it the remainder of the night, sit by the stove or go out into the backyard, if it was summer or autumn.

Melancholia has always dogged me. It seems to sit inside of me and peer out. It catches me, involves me, at the most unexpected moments. Melancholy influences my decisions, legal decisions or those at home, even while I am playing with the children. Like any physical handicap I try to live with it, minimize it.

Springfield problems were largely legal problems, problems for Billy and me, problems about horse thieves, mortgage foreclosures, defaults in payment, land t.i.tles.

I lost a manslaughter case but won my defense of the nine women involved in rioting. I had a bevy of widows trail after me when I won the case of the man accused of robbing the mail of $15,000.

Such problems create a backwash over the years; I see now that on my circuit I avoided home very frequently, staying away two or three weeks at a time. Marital bliss and melancholia are known to be mates.

Executive Mansion

8/9/63

For years I was haunted by a great number of things.

First, it was essential to learn to read. Then to write.

To find work that would support me. I wished to help others. I felt that there was more to life than brute labor. I found friends. Honesty appealed. I was not impressed by rowdies. Serving as Captain in the Black Hawk War taught me that causes are not always good causes. Scalped men are not helpful men.

I can not forget those men lying in the bush, lying in a row, red sunlight on them.

My father was a slave to ignorance.

My mother was a slave to the wilderness.