Daily Story
Deer and a Calf
[In the Chicago Times-Herald a correspondent reports an interview with Philip Clark, pioneer of Sangamon County, about AL:] “In one of his early races for Congress I heard him debate with Peter Cartwright, who was the terror of every local orator, as his opponent. He asked Cartwright if General Jackson did right in the removal–I believe it was–of the bank deposits. Cartwright evaded the question and gave a very indefinite answer. Lincoln remarked that Cartwright reminded him of a hunter he once knew who recognized the fact that in summer the deer were red and in winter gray, and at one season therefore a deer might resemble a calf. The hunter had brought down one at long range when it was hard to see the difference, and boasting of his own marksmanship had said: “I shot at it so as to hit if it was a deer and miss it if a calf.” This convulsed the audience, and carried them with Lincoln.”
Emanuel Hertz, Anecdotes By & About Abraham Lincoln, p. 113.