Abraham Lincoln

Letter to John Johnston (December 24, 1848)

Posted on February 10, 2016 Updated on February 10, 2016

Washington, December 24, 1848
Dear Johnston:
Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think it best, to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me “We can get along very well now” but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work; and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children that you should break this habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it; easier than they can get out after they are in.
You are now in need of some ready money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, “tooth and nails” for some body who will give you money [for] it. Let father and your boys take charge of things at home-prepare for a crop, and make the crop; and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get. And to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next May, get for your own labor, either in money, or in your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dolla[rs] a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this, I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines, in Calif[ornia,] but I [mean for you to go at it for the best wages you] can get close to home [in] Coles county. Now if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in Heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in Heaven very cheaply for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months work. You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and, if you dont pay the money back, you will deliver possession. Nonsense! If you cant now live with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been [kind] to me, and I do not now mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eight times eighty dollars to you.
Affectionately Your brother
 A. Lincoln.

In this simple letter, Lincoln reaches an altitude of tone which he will hardly transcend in the finest of his great political speeches. He says not a word which can affront the lazybones, who is a mar- ried man with a family ; nor does he adopt a paternal note (like that in the previous letter), in order to deliver a homily on the blessing of labor. When these two brothers talk about places in heaven, they do it in the spirit of farmers, and not in the vein of the pious.

Johnston is shrewd. He knows that Abraham Lincoln has a kindly heart. It will be all right to mortgage the land to brother Abraham, who will never claim the pledge. But at bottom, Lincoln is the shrewder of the two. Kind-hearted though he be, he does not pro- pose to go on throwing money into a yawning hole in the ground. Eighty dollars? Oh, yes, John Johnston shall have eighty dollars, but in the course of eight months, in which he must earn eighty for himself. Lincoln, wishing both to teach the other and to avoid promising too much, limits his offer as regards time, though not as regards amount. Herein we have Lincoln, the practical idealist, the philanthropist who wants to do his best for every one, but only on a realistic basis ; the man in whose temperament heart and brain exercise a joint control.

By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul”   Ludwig-148-10