Posted on 05/12/2020 8:02:25 AM PDT by 11th_VA
Late-1850, Abraham Lincoln‘s step-brother, John D. Johnston, wrote to him and asked, yet again, for a loan with which to settle some debts. Said Johnston:
I am dund & doged to Death so I am all most tired of Living, & I would all most swop my place in Heaven for that much money […] I would rother live on bread and wotter than to have men allways duning me […] If you can send me 80 Dollars I am willing to pay you any Intrust you will ask.
On previous occasions Lincoln simply would have agreed to such a request. This time, however, sensing an opportunity to impart some wisdom, he responded with the following letter of advice and a proposal:
January 2, 1851
Dear Johnston:
Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little you have said to me, “We can get along very well now”; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct.
What that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in.
You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, “tooth and nail,” for somebody who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take charge of your things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar.
By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles County.
Now, if you will do this, you will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But, if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in heaven for seventy or eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven very cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months’ work. You say if I will furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and, if you don’t pay the money back, you will deliver possession. Nonsense! If you can’t now live with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eighty times eighty dollars to you.
Affectionately your brother,
A. Lincoln
I would like to know the outcome of the story.
That’s a ‘Paul Harvey’ question - I’ll need to research it
I do not loan money and ever expect to get it back from family because I usually won’t. If I don’t have enough to give the money away, I don’t loan it.
Also, if you loan someone $100 and never see them again, it was probably worth it to get them out of your life.
Another pearl of wisdom !!!!
Many on this board do not admire Lincoln, and I can see their point, even if I don’t agree with them. But as I used to tell my history students, someone who basically teaches himself to read, like Lincoln or Frederick Douglass, is a pretty smart person. If you read Lincoln’s writings, you can see the genius behind the words—and of course, he wrote his own stuff.
Seth Godin:
Your story about money
Is a story. About money.
Money isn’t real. It’s a method of exchange, a unit we exchange for something we actually need or value. It has worth because we agree it has worth, because we agree what it can be exchanged for.
But there’s something far more powerful going on here.
We don’t actually agree, because each person’s valuation of money is based on the stories we tell ourselves about it.
Our bank balance is merely a number, bits represented on a screen, but it’s also a signal and symptom. We tell ourselves a story about how we got that money, what it says about us, what we’re going to do with it and how other people judge us. We tell ourselves a story about how that might grow, and more vividly, how that money might disappear or shrink or be taken away.
And those stories, those very powerful unstated stories, impact the narrative of just about everything else we do.
So yes, there’s money. But before there’s money, there’s a story. It turns out that once you change the story, the money changes too.
I was also put in difficult positions with some family members with regards to money. Very rarely are loans given to family members ever paid back and more importantly, as A. Lincoln points out, giving "loans" never addresses the root problem. The family member you help out today will very quickly be back in the same position.
I was finally able to escape much of this by relocating to a different part of the country from where my family was.
Superb!
I’m really torn by Lincoln, because of my family roots. I admire his wisdom.(He even chose Lee, to lead his army: though Lee declined)
Or... for generations of able-bodied liberals on the dole, who won’t get themselves into the habit of taking responsibility for themselves.
As evidenced by the Fed being able to create it in the many trillions out of thin air...with a few key strokes as it were.
It is amazing the fictions and un-realities that are created and perpetuated in human civilization. Satan is Father of Lies indeed, lies we have codified and are living by every day on Earth. Who’s picture is on it? Then give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. The most amazing truth of human society is that money is not real...it is merely a fiction that our collective governments and economies agree to, that is what makes it “real”.
That’s what I did. $5,000. Best money I ever flushed down the toilet.
ping
" I learned that you are anxious to sell the land where you live and move to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever since, and cannot but think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats, without work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year; and what you really want is to sell the land, get the money, and spend it"
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-john-d-johnston/
The letter was from 1848 and not 1851. In the same letter Lincoln sent $20 for his father. John Johnston seems to have been a bit of a ne'er-do-well because through 1851 there are several letters from Lincoln advising him on his plan to sell out and move to Missouri (Lincoln was against it), and plans to sell some of the land left in Thomas Lincoln's estate. Lincoln was concerned with his step-mother's welfare and how she would live and didn't want the estate frittered away.
Me too.
Money and family is always a gnarly question. There is different meaning of money to different people, there is the societal ties and morality expected with the “family,” there is the personal code or lack of as well as the individual family code, there are expectations, competitions and comparisons galore. And all to what end? To breed misery.
One thing is for sure: everything comes with a price.
Wonderful story and great wisdom. I have a brother just like Lincoln’s, but I have not been quite as charitable as Lincoln seems to have been.
My guess is that Lincoln’s brother remained penniless and non-productive, but it would be interesting to know the rest of the story.
I basically funded my brother's doctoral degree, bought him a car, set him up in an apartment, and fed him almost every night for months. Didn't see a dime back.
I have a niece with a substance abuse problem. I "loaned" her a few hundred dollars to "get on her feet." She spent it all on dope. Never saw a dime of it back.
And my own son continues to leech off me every time I turn around, always with some sob story about the misfortune that's befallen him and puts an unexpected demand on his funds. And always with assurances that this is the last time he'll ask for money.
It's long past time to draw the line.
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