GDG- "chained six and six together" A. Lincoln, Sept.8th. 1841

[Dennis Lawrence]

To Mary Speed [1]
Miss Mary Speed, Bloomington, Illinois,
Louisville, Ky. Sept. 27th. 1841

My Friend: Having resolved to write to some of your mother's family, and 
not having the express permission of any one of them [to] do so, I have had 
some little difficulty in determining on which to inflict the task of 
reading what I now feel must be a most dull and silly letter; but when I 
remembered that you and I were something of cronies while I was at 
Farmington, [2] and that, while there, I once was under the necessity of 
shutting you up in a room to prevent

your committing an assault and battery upon me, I instantly decided that 
you should be the devoted one.

I assume that you have not heard from Joshua & myself since we left, [3] 
because I think it doubtful whether he has written.

You remember there was some uneasiness about Joshua's health when we left. 
That little indisposition of his turned out to be nothing serious; and it 
was pretty nearly forgotten when we reached Springfield. We got on board 
the Steam Boat Lebanon, in the locks of the Canal about 12. o'clock. M. of 
the day we left, and reached St. Louis the next monday at 8 P.M. Nothing of 
interest happened during the passage, except the vexatious delays 
occasioned by the sand bars be thought interesting. By the way, a fine 
example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect of 
condition upon human happiness. A gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in 
different parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the South. 
They were chained six and six together. A small iron clevis was around the 
left wrist of each, and this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one at 
a convenient distance from, the others; so that the negroes were strung 
together precisely like so many fish upon a trot-line. In this condition 
they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their 
friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of 
them, from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where 
the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than 
any other where; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we 
would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparantly happy 
creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he had been sold was an 
over-fondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually; and the 
others danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards 
from day to day. How true it is that ``God tempers the wind to the shorn 
lamb,'' or in other words, that He renders the worst of human conditions 
tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing better than tolerable.

To return to the narative. When we reached Springfield, I staid but one day 
when I started on this tedious circuit where I now am. Do you remember my 
going to the city [4] while I was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, 
and making a failure of it? Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so 
much, that about a week since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of 
the jawbone; the consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that 
I can neither
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talk, nor eat. I am litterally ``subsisting on savoury 
remembrances''---that is, being unable to eat, I am living upon the 
remembrance of the delicious dishes of peaches and cream we used to have at 
your house.

When we left, Miss Fanny Henning [5] was owing you a visit, as I 
understood. Has she paid it yet? If she has, are you not convinced that she 
is one of the sweetest girls in the world? There is but one thing about 
her, so far as I could perceive, that I would have otherwise than as it is. 
That is something of a tendency to melancholly. This, let it be observed, 
is a misfortune not a fault. Give her an assurance of my verry highest 
regard, when you see her.

Is little Siss Eliza Davis [6] at your house yet? If she is kiss her ``o'er 
and o'er again'' for me.

Tell your mother that I have not got her ``present'' [7] with me; but that 
I intend to read it regularly when I return home. I doubt not that it is 
really, as she says, the best cure for the ``Blues'' could one but take it 
according to the truth.

Give my respects to all your sisters (including ``Aunt Emma'') [8] and 
brothers. Tell Mrs. Peay, [9] of whose happy face I shall long retain a 
pleasant remembrance, that I have been trying to think of a name for her 
homestead, but as yet, can not satisfy myself with one. I shall be verry 
happy to receive a line from you, soon after you receive this; and, in case 
you choose to favour me with one, address it to Charleston, Coles Co. Ills 
as I shall be there about the time to receive it. Your sincere friend A. 
LINCOLN
Annotation

[1]   ALS, DLC. Mary Speed was the daughter of John Speed by his first 
wife, and a half sister to Joshua.

[2]   Lincoln visited Joshua Speed from early August to the middle of 
September, at the Speed plantation in Jefferson County, Kentucky, near 
Louisville, called Farmington.

[3]   Joshua returned with Lincoln and stayed until the first of the year.

[4]   Probably Louisville, Kentucky.

[5]   The future wife of Joshua Speed.

[6]   Since Lincoln's reference seems to imply a child, this is probably 
the two-year-old daughter of Joshua's younger sister Susan Fry Speed Davis. 
However, Mary's own younger sister (also a child of John Speed's first 
wife) was named Eliza Davis Speed.

[7]   An ``Oxford'' Bible.

[8]   Inquiry among descendants of the Speed family elicits the possibility 
that Lincoln refers to Emma Keats who married Joshua's younger brother 
Philip. This would account for Lincoln's use of quotation marks to set off 
the name. Emma Keats was a daughter of George Keats, the brother of the 
poet John Keats.

[9]   Mrs. Peachy Walker Speed Peay (wife of Austin Peay), Joshua's older 
sister.

Lincoln referred to this again in a letter to Joshua F. Speed fourteen 
years later

Dear Speed: Springfield, Aug: 24, 1855

In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat 
from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from 
Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen 
slaves, shackled together with irons. [2] That sight was a continual 
torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or 
any other slave-border.