"As a Lad he Often Heard Great Emancipator Tell Stories to Friends"

Senator Dickey Tells of Lincoln: As a Lad he Often Heard Great Emancipator Tell Stories to Friends

Pacific Commerical Advertiser: Friday, February 13, 1914 (Transcribed by Jeffrey Bingham Mead)

Speaking to the students of the Y.M.C.A. night school last evening, ex-Senator C.H. Dickey told of his “Reminiscences of Lincoln.”

“My father was a circuit court judge in north Illinois and both Lincoln and Douglas practiced in his court, which was held at times in the village of Chicago,” said Mr. Dickey. “My father and Lincoln were often bedfellows, as they often visited the small towns and spent the night together at the hotels. It was while they were spending a night together thus that Lincoln first made the statement which later was the keynote of all of his life-work. He and father had been talking through the evening over the question of slavery, and fell asleep while they were talking. Later on in the night Lincoln wakened my father and said with great earnestness: ‘Dickey, I tell you, the United States cannot exist half-slave and half-free.’ Not realizing he had heard a statement which would become immortal, my father somewhat gruffly told him to forget that for now and go to sleep.

“Lincoln often stopped at our house and though folks now tell of him as a very homely man my recollections of him are always with his face covered with smiles. We children always liked to have him visit us. With the forming of the Douglas party in Illinois, my father found himself on the Douglas-Democrat party as opposed to Lincoln. Later, in our home I heard Lincoln tell my father: ‘Dickey, I believe that it was your work in Central and Southern Illinois which beat me.’ If he had been elected senator then I expect that he would not have led the Nation as President later, so that my father was playing a large part in national affairs.

“Though I heard him tell many of his stories I can remember but one. With three or four men and my father they spent an evening together swapping stories. As a boy I was allowed to remain in the room and listened to them talking. Lincoln told of his troubles in French St. Louis on a recent trip there on legal business. He was in a French dining room ordering his dinner. The menu was in French and since he did not understand a word of it he pointed to the first item. The waiter brought him a bowl of mulligatawny soup. That finished, he pointed to the second item and received a bowl of oyster soup. Somewhat puzzled, he finished the oyster soup and signaled for the next article listed and, greatly to his surprise, the waiter came in with vermicelli soup. In despair he motioned for the last item on the bill and the waiter came back with a mug of toothpicks.

“I, myself, served three and a half years in the army; entering as a private and later receiving a commission as second lieutenant as was adjutant in General Grant’s bodyguard,” concluded Senator Dickey.