Abe Lincoln Wrestles Jack Armstrong

JOHN G. NICOLAY AND JOHN HAY

In 1831, a flat boatman named Abraham Lincoln took up residence in the frontier village of New Salem, Illinois, to try his hand at clerking in a general store. The store’s proprietor, a backwoods schemer named Denton Offutt, could not help bragging about his new clerk’s strength, and his talk soon landed Abe in a wrestling match with Jack Armstrong, leader of a local gang of rowdies. As many biographers have noted, the contest turned out to be an important event in the life of the future president.

The episode is a good reminder that the character a young man displays in a physical challenge often affects other spheres of his life. In this case, it helped Lincoln establish a reputation he would use to launch a career in law and politics. For better or worse, rough-and-tumble jams are part of growing up for many young men. Sometimes the outcome involves hard knocks. Still, there are lessons to be learned from such rough play.

This account of the famous wrestling match is abridged from the biography of Lincoln by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, who served as his private secretaries in the White House. The charming language is from another era but carries perennial truths.

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Denton Offutt admired Abraham beyond measure, and praised him beyond prudence. He said that Abe could beat any man in the county running, jumping, or “wrastling.” This proposition was not likely to pass unchallenged.

Public opinion at New Salem was formed by a crowd of ruffianly young fellows who were called the Clary’s Grove Boys. Once or twice a week they descended upon the village and passed the day in drinking, fighting, and brutal horse-play. If a stranger appeared in the place, he was likely to suffer a rude initiation into the social life of New Salem at the hands of these jovial savages. Sometimes he was nailed up in a hogshead and rolled down hill; sometimes he was insulted into a fight and then mauled black and blue, for despite their pretensions to chivalry they had no scruples about fair play or any such superstitions of civilization.

At first they did not seem inclined to molest young Lincoln. His appearance did not invite insolence; his reputation for strength and activity was a greater protection to him than his inoffensive good-nature. But the loud admiration of Offutt gave them umbrage. It led to dispute, contradictions, and finally to a formal banter [challenge] to a wrestling match. Lincoln was greatly averse to all this “wooling and pulling,” as he called it. But Offutt’s indiscretion had made it necessary for him to show his mettle.

Jack Armstrong, the leading bully of the gang, was selected to throw him, and expected an easy victory. But he soon found himself in different hands from any he had heretofore engaged with. Seeing he could not manage the tall stranger, his friends swarmed in, and by kicking and tripping nearly succeeded in getting Lincoln down.

At this, as has been said of another hero, “the spirit of Odin entered into him,” and putting forth his whole strength, he held the pride of Clary’s Grove in his arms like a child, and almost choked the exuberant life out of him. For a moment a general fight seemed inevitable; but Lincoln, standing undismayed with his back to the wall, looked so formidable in his defiance that an honest admiration took the place of momentary fury, and his initiation was over.

As to Armstrong, he was Lincoln’s friend and sworn brother as soon as he recovered the use of his larynx, and the bond thus strangely created lasted through life. Lincoln had no further occasion to fight his own battles while Armstrong was there to act as his champion. The two friends, although so widely different, were helpful to each other afterwards in many ways.

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This incident, trivial and vulgar as it may seem, was of great importance in Lincoln’s life. His behavior in this ignoble scuffle did the work of years for him, in giving him the position he required in the community where his lot was cast. He became from that moment, in a certain sense, a personage, with a name and standing of his own. The verdict of Clary’s Grove was unanimous that he was “the cleverest fellow that had ever broke into the settlement.” He did not have to be constantly scuffling to guard his self-respect, and at the same time he gained the good-will of the better sort by his evident peaceableness and integrity.