Lincoln also skinned Colonel Dick Taylor, a Democratic candidate for the state senate whose assaults on Whig elitism nettled him. The “showy, bombastic” Taylor was “a talkative, noisy fellow” and “a consummate fop” who “never appeared in public without a ruffled shirt, a blue coat and brass buttons, and a gold-headed cane.” When Taylor denounced Whigs as aristocrats, Lincoln “replied that whilst Col. Taylor had his stores over the county, and was riding in a fine carriage, wore his kid gloves and had a gold headed cane, he [Lincoln] was a poor boy hired on a flat boat at eight dollars a month, and had only one pair of breeches and they were of buckskin.” He explained to the audience, “if you know the nature of buckskin when wet and dried by the sun they would shrink and mine kept shrinking until they left for several inches my legs bare between the top of my Socks and the lower part of my breeches—and whilst I was growing taller they were becoming shorter: and so much tighter, that they left a blue streak around my leg which you can see to this day—If you call this aristocracy I plead guilty to the charge.” Lincoln then unbuttoned Taylor’s vest and out cascaded his ruffled shirt “like a pile of Entrails,” causing the crowd to “burst forth in a furious & uproarious laughter.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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