A Lincoln Anecdote

By Scott Horton

The following anecdote of the late President Lincoln has never been published, I think, and unlike, perhaps, some of the stories attributed to him, is an actual fact, for I have it from one who was present at the time and sat next the hero. During Mr. Lincoln’s practice of his profession of the law, long before he was thought of for President, he was attending the Circuit Court which met at Bloomington, Illinois. The Prosecuting Attorney, a lawyer by the name of Lamon, was a man of great physical strength, and took particular pleasure in athletic sports, and was so fond of wrestling that his power and experience rendered him a formidable and generally successful opponent. One pleasant day in the fall Lamon was wrestling near the court-house with some one who had challenged him to a trial, and in the scuffle made a large rent in the rear of his unmentionables. Before he had time to make any change he was called into court to take up a case. The evidence was finished, and Lamon got up to address the jury, and having on a somewhat short coat his misfortune was rather apparent. One of the lawyers, for a joke, started a subscription paper, which was passed from one member of the bar to another as they sat by a long table fronting the bench, to buy a pair of pantaloons for Lamon, “he being,” the paper said, “a poor but worthy young man.” Several put down their names with some ludicrous subscription, and finally the paper was laid by some one in front of Mr. Lincoln, on a plea that he was engaged in writing at the time. He quietly glanced over the paper, and immediately took up his pen and wrote after his name, “I can contribute nothing to the end in view.”

–George William Curtis, The Editor’s Drawer, Harper’s Magazine, March 1866.