Part 22

Article written by Lincoln for the Sangamon Journal in ridicule of James Shields, who, as State Auditor, had declined to receive State Bank notes in payment of taxes. The above letter purported to come from a poor widow who, though supplied with State Bank paper, could not obtain a receipt for her tax bill. This, and another subsequent letter by Mary Todd, brought about the “Lincoln-Shields Duel.”

LOST TOWNSHIPS

August 27, 1842.

DEAR Mr. PRINTER:

I see you printed that long letter I sent you a spell ago. I ’m quite encouraged by it, and can’t keep from writing again. I think the printing of my letters will be a good thing all round—it will give me the benefit of being known by the world, and give the world the advantage of knowing what’s going on in the Lost Townships, and give your paper respectability besides. So here comes another. Yesterday afternoon I hurried through cleaning up the dinner dishes and stepped over to neighbor S——— to see if his wife Peggy was as well as mout be expected, and hear what they called the baby. Well, when I got there and just turned round the corner of his log cabin, there he was, setting on the doorstep reading a newspaper. “How are you, Jeff?” says I. He sorter started when he heard me, for he hadn’t seen me before. “Why,” says he, “I ’m mad as the devil, Aunt ’Becca!” “What about?” says I; “ain’t its hair the right color? None of that nonsense, Jeff; there ain’t an honester woman in the Lost Townships than....”—“Than who?” says he; “what the mischief are you about?” I began to see I was running the wrong trail, and so says I, “Oh! nothing: I guess I was mistaken a little, that’s all. But what is it you ’re mad about?”

“Why,” says he, “I’ve been tugging ever since harvest, getting out wheat and hauling it to the river to raise State Bank paper enough to pay my tax this year and a little school debt I owe; and now, just as I ’ve got it, here I open this infernal Extra Register, expecting to find it full of ‘Glorious Democratic Victories’ and ‘High Comb’d Cocks,’ when, lo and behold! I find a set of fellows, calling themselves officers of the State, have forbidden the tax collectors, and school commissioners to receive State paper at all; and so here it is dead on my hands. I don’t now believe all the plunder I’ve got will fetch ready cash enough to pay my taxes and that school debt.”

I was a good deal thunderstruck myself; for that was the first I had heard of the proclamation, and my old man was pretty much in the same fix with Jeff. We both stood a moment staring at one another without knowing what to say. At last says I, “Mr. S——— let me look at that paper.” He handed it to me, when I read the proclamation over.

“There now,” says he, “did you ever see such a piece of impudence and imposition as that?” I saw Jeff was in a good tune for saying some ill-natured things, and so I tho’t I would just argue a little on the contrary side, and make him rant a spell if I could. “Why,” says I, looking as dignified and thoughtful as I could, “it seems pretty tough, to be sure, to have to raise silver where there’s none to be raised; but then, you see, ‘there will be danger of loss’ if it ain’t done.”

“Loss! damnation!” says he. “I defy Daniel Webster, I defy King Solomon, I defy the world—I defy—I defy—yes, I defy even you, Aunt ’Becca, to show how the people can lose anything by paying their taxes in State paper.”

“Well,” says I, “you see what the officers of State say about it, and they are a desarnin’ set of men. But,” says I, “I guess you ’re mistaken about what the proclamation says. It don’t say the people will lose anything by the paper money being taken for taxes. It only says ‘there will be danger of loss’; and though it is tolerable plain that the people can’t lose by paying their taxes in something they can get easier than silver, instead of having to pay silver; and though it’s just as plain that the State can’t lose by taking State Bank paper, however low it may be, while she owes the bank more than the whole revenue, and can pay that paper over on her debt, dollar for dollar;—still there is danger of loss to the ‘officers of State’; and you know, Jeff, we can’t get along without officers of State.”

“Damn officers of State!” says he; “that’s what Whigs are always hurrahing for.”

“Now, don’t swear so, Jeff,” says I, “you know I belong to the meetin’, and swearin’ hurts my feelings.”

“Beg pardon, Aunt ’Becca,” says he; “but I do say it’s enough to make Dr. Goddard swear, to have tax to pay in silver, for nothing only that Ford may get his two thousand a year, and Shields his twenty-four hundred a year, and Carpenter his sixteen hundred a year, and all without ‘danger of loss’ by taking it in State paper. Yes, yes: it’s plain enough now what these officers of State mean by ‘danger of loss.’ Wash, I s’pose, actually lost fifteen hundred dollars out of the three thousand that two of these ‘officers of State’ let him steal from the treasury, by being compelled to take it in State paper. Wonder if we don’t have a proclamation before long, commanding us to make up this loss to Wash in silver.”

And so he went on till his breath run out, and he had to stop. I couldn’t think of anything to say just then, and so I begun to look over the paper again. “Ay! here’s another proclamation, or something like it.”

“Another?” says Jeff; “and whose egg is it, pray?”

I looked to the bottom of it, and read aloud, “Your obedient servant, James Shields, Auditor.”

“Aha!” says Jeff, “one of them same three fellows again. Well read it, and let’s hear what of it.”

I read on till I came to where it says, “The object of this measure is to suspend the collection of the revenue for the current year.”

“Now stop, now stop!” says he; “that’s a lie a’ready, and I don’t want to hear of it.”

“Oh, maybe not,” says I.

“I say it-is-a-lie. Suspend the collection, indeed! Will the collectors, that have taken their oaths to make the collection, dare to end it? Is there anything in law requiring them to perjure themselves at the bidding of James Shields?

“Will the greedy gullet of the penitentiary be satisfied with swallowing him instead of all of them, if they should venture to obey him? And would he not discover some ‘danger of loss,’ and be off about the time it came to taking their places?

“And suppose the people attempt to suspend, by refusing to pay; what then? The collectors would just jerk up their horses and cows, and the like, and sell them to the highest bidder for silver in hand, without valuation or redemption. Why, Shields didn’t believe that story himself; it was never meant for the truth. If it was true, why was it not writ till five days after the proclamation? Why did n’t Carlin and Carpenter sign it as well as Shields? Answer me that, Aunt ’Becca. I say it’s a lie, and not a well told one at that. It grins out like a copper dollar. Shields is a fool as well as a liar. With him truth is out of the question; and as for getting a good, bright, passable lie out of him, you might as well try to strike fire from a cake of tallow. I stick to it, it’s all an infernal Whig lie!”

“A Whig lie! Highty tighty!”

“Yes, a Whig lie; and it’s just like everything the cursed British Whigs do. First they’ll do some divilment, and then they’ll tell a lie to hide it. And they don’t care how plain a lie it is; they think they can cram any sort of a one down the throats of the ignorant Locofocos, as they call the Democrats.”

“Why, Jeff, you ’re crazy: you don’t mean to say Shields is a Whig!”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why, look here! the proclamation is in your own Democratic paper, as you call it.”