Note i-37 — Chapter I · PINCHING TIMES
Reading edition
At about the time Abraham Lincoln thus spoke to his creditors in Illinois, a young man in far-away Maine named Hannibal Hamlin, destined to share his electoral honors, used somewhat similar language under corresponding circumstances. He had gone on the bond of a certain deputy sheriff for four thousand dollars. That officer became a defaulter, and the people who had claims against him looked to his bondsmen. Hamlin, having called the creditors together, said: “My friends, I have lived among you only a few years, but I think you know that I keep my word. I am poor, young, and struggling for an honest support for myself. This struggle will continue right among you, my neighbors. I am unable now to meet this just debt; but if you will give me time, and God will give me strength, I will pay off every dollar I owe you, even if it takes me a lifetime to do it.”
He redeemed his promise to the last cent; but at what cost may be inferred from his exclamation, many years later, in telling the story: “Heavens! how long it kept my nose on the grindstone.”
A fuller narrative of the incident may be found in Hamlin, 46. For another somewhat similar episode, in the early life of Andrew Jackson, the reader is referred to Brady, 56-57.