An "out-of-character" moment for Lincoln?

[RJNorton]

(05-08-2014 05:24 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  

(03-17-2013 07:06 AM)LincolnMan Wrote:  Roger, I'm like you-not sure it was true-probably not. Think about it for a second: Lincoln was wearing new clothing-which for him in those days must have been expensive. He then rode on past the pig two miles. Two miles is a long way in those days-on horseback. Then it is said he turned around and rode back the two miles to rescue the creature. I have my doubts!

Mary Owens told Herndon that Lincoln himself had told her the "hog mired down" story: "In many things he was sensitive almost to a fault. He told me of an incident; that he was crossing a prairie one day, and saw before him a hog mired down, to use his own language; he was rather fixed up [dressed well] and he resolved that he would pass on without looking towards the shoat, after he had gone by, he said, the feeling was so eresistable and he had to look back, and the poor thing seemed to say so wistfully--There now! my last hope is gone; that he deliberately got down and relieved it from its difficulty." Herndon's Informants, 262. It's a judgment made without hard proof, but I very much doubt that Mrs. Mary (Owens) Vineyard invented this story, or that she would have repeated it had she heard it from someone other than Lincoln.

In searching for more accounts of the hog story I came across a statement from Charles S. Zane, a legal associate of Abraham Lincoln and later the Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court. Anita mentioned Zane many months ago. Zane wrote that Lincoln had told him this story:

"One afternoon I (Lincoln) was traveling in my buggy on my way to fill an appointment for a political speech in the evening, when I came to a very muddy place in the road, by careful driving to one side I got through, but I saw a hog stuck fast with his head still out of the stiff mud, and I knew that he would never get out without help, but my boots were polished and I was dressed for the meeting and drove on; but thinking of the loss to the owner and the cruelty to the animal, I did not feel satisfied and thought it would be wrong to leave the hog there to perish, and turned back and got out and pulled the animal from the mire to solid ground, then found some water nearby and washed my hands and drove on. My action seemed disinterested, but on further reflection I found that the act was done to regain my peace of mind, my own happiness, and was not entirely disinterested on my part."