ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Contents

List of Illustrations

A Lincoln Calendar

Abraham Lincoln

I
THE MAN AND HIS KINDRED

This is not a conventional biography. It is a collection of sketches in which an attempt is made to portray the character of Abraham Lincoln as the highest type of the American from several interesting points of view. He has doubtless been the subject of more literary composition than any other man of modern times, although there was nothing eccentric or abnormal about him; there were no mysteries in his career to excite curiosity; no controversies concerning his conduct, morals, or motives; no doubt as to his purposes; and no difference of opinion as to his unselfish patriotism or the success of his administration of the government in the most trying period of its existence. Perhaps there is no other man of prominence in American history, or in the history of the human family, whose reputation is more firmly and clearly established. There is certainly none more beloved and revered, whose character is so well understood and so universally admired, and whose political, moral, and intellectual integrity is so fully admitted by his opponents as well as his supporters.

Of such a man, wrote a well-known writer, the last word can never be said. Each succeeding generation may profit by the contemplation of his strength and triumphs. His rise from obscurity to fame and power was almost as sudden and startling as that of Napoleon, for it may truthfully be said that when Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency he was an unknown man. He had occupied no important position; he had rendered no great public service; his reputation was that of a debater and politician, and did not become national until he delivered a remarkable speech at Cooper Union, New York. His election was not due to personal popularity, nor to the strength of the party he represented, nor to the justice of his cause; but to factional strife and jealousies among his opponents. When the American people were approaching the greatest crisis in their history, it was the hand of Providence that turned the eyes of the loyal people of the North to this plain man of the prairies, and his rugged figure rose before them as if he were created for their leader.

Napoleon became dizzy; yielded to the temptations of power, betrayed his people, grasped at empire, and fell; but the higher Lincoln rose the more modest became his manners, the more serene his temper, the more conspicuous his unselfishness, the purer and more patriotic his motives. With masterful tact and force he assumed responsibilities that made men shudder. The captain of a company of uncouth volunteers began to organize vast armies, undertook the direction of military campaigns and of a momentous civil war, and conducted the diplomatic relations of a nation with skill and statesmanship that astonished his ministers and his generals. He, an humble country lawyer and local politician, suddenly took his place with the world's greatest statesmen, planned and managed the legislation of Congress, proposed financial measures that involved the wealth of the nation, and alone, in the midst of the confusion of war and the clamor of greedy politicians and the dissensions of his advisers, solved problems that staggered the wisest minds of the nation. The popular story-teller of the cross-roads, the crack debater of the New Salem Literary Club, became an orator of immortal fame. The rail-splitter of the Sangamon became the most honored and respected man of his generation.

Such men are not accidents. The strength of a structure depends upon the material used and the treatment it has received. Poor material may be improved and good material is often spoiled in the making; but only when the pure metal has passed through the fire and the forge is it fit to sustain a severe strain. Thus Abraham Lincoln, unconscious of his destiny, by the struggles and privations of his early life was qualified for the task to which Infinite Wisdom had assigned him.

Abraham Lincoln's father was descended from Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from the west of England a few years after the landing of the Pilgrims and settled at the village of Hingham, on the south shore of Massachusetts Bay, between Boston and Plymouth. Eight men bearing that name came over on the same ship and are supposed to have been related. An army of their descendants is scattered over the Union. One of them, Samuel Lincoln, left a large family which has produced several prominent figures besides a President of the United States. One of his grandsons in the third generation, Levi Lincoln, was recognized for a generation as the leader of the New England bar. He was Secretary of State and Attorney-General in the Cabinet of President Jefferson, a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and one of the ablest and most influential men of his day.

The fourth son of Samuel Lincoln, Mordecai, I, acquired wealth as a manufacturer. His eldest son, who inherited his name, moved to Berks County, Pennsylvania, and had a son named John, who took up a tract of land in Virginia about the year 1760, where, like the rest of his name, he raised a large family. John Lincoln, II, his second son, became prominent in public affairs, and was a member of the Convention that framed the first Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania.

On July 10, 1760, Abraham, I, the third of the five sons of John Lincoln, II, married Anna Boone, a cousin of Daniel Boone, the most famous of American pioneers, and his father gave him a farm in the Shenandoah Valley. By frequent intermarriages between the Boones and the Lincolns they were closely allied. By the will of Mordecai Lincoln, II, his "loving friend and neighbor George Boone" was made executor of his estate and Squire Boone, father of the celebrated Daniel, was appointed to make an inventory of the property. Hananiah Lincoln was a partner of Daniel Boone in the purchase of a tract of land on the Missouri River in 1798, and it was there that the great woodsman died.

The name Abraham was a favorite among the Lincoln family. It occurs frequently in their genealogy. A young man named Abraham Lincoln distinguished himself for courage and brutality on the Confederate side during the Civil War. He killed a Dunkard preacher whom he suspected of furnishing information to the Union army. The Union President received several letters of offensive tone from his kinsman in the South during the earlier part of his administration.

The farm of Abraham Lincoln, I, in the Shenandoah Valley, was on the great national highway along which the course of empire took its westward way, and, infected by continual contact with the emigrants and encouraged by the greatest of American pioneers, he sold the property his father had given him, packed his wife and five children into a Conestoga wagon, and followed the great migration until it led him to what is now Hughes Station, Jefferson County, Kentucky, where he entered a large tract of land and paid for it one hundred and sixty pounds "in current money." The original warrant, dated March 4, 1780, is still in existence. By the blunder of a clerk in the Land Office the name was misspelled Linkhorn, and Abraham, I, was too careless or busy to correct it, for it appears that way in all the subsequent records. Hananiah Lincoln, the partner of Daniel Boone, furnished the surveyor's certificate.

Four years later, in the spring of 1784, occurred the first tragedy in the annals of the Lincoln family. Abraham, I, with his three sons, were at work clearing ground upon his farm when they were attacked by a wandering squad of Indians. The first shot from the brush killed the father. Mordecai, III, the eldest son, started to the house for his rifle; Josiah ran to the neighbors for assistance, leaving Thomas, a child of six, alone with his father. After Mordecai had recovered his rifle he saw an Indian in war-paint appear upon the scene, examine the dead body of his father, and stoop to raise the lad from the ground. Taking deliberate aim at a white ornament that hung from the neck of the savage, he brought him down and his little brother escaped to the cabin. The Indians began to appear in the thicket, but Mordecai, shooting through the loopholes of the cabin, held them off until Josiah returned with reinforcements.

From circumstantial evidence we must infer that Anna Lincoln was a poor manager, or perhaps she suffered from some misfortune. All we know is that she abandoned the farm in Jefferson County and moved south into the neighboring county of Washington, where she disappears from human knowledge. Her eldest son, Mordecai, III, appears to have inherited his father's money, as the rules of primogeniture prevailed in those days. He was sheriff of Washington County, a member of the Kentucky Legislature, and tradition gives him the reputation of an honorable and influential citizen. Late in life he removed to Hancock County, Illinois, where he died and is buried. Josiah, the second son, crossed the Ohio River and took up a homestead in what is now called Harrison County, Indiana. Mary, the eldest daughter, married Ralph Crume, and Nancy, the fourth child, married William Brumfield. Their descendants are still found in Hardin, Washington, and other counties in that neighborhood.

Explanations are wanting for the circumstance that Thomas, the youngest son and brother of this prosperous family, whose father was slain before his eyes when he was only six years old, was turned adrift, without home or care, for at ten years of age we find him "a wandering, laboring boy" who was left uneducated and supported himself by farm work and other menial employment, and learned the trades of carpenter and cabinet-maker. But he must have had good stuff in him, for when he was twenty-five years old he had saved enough from his wages to buy a farm in Hardin County. Local tradition, which, however, cannot always be trusted, represents him to have been "an easy going man, and slow to anger, but when 'roused a formidable adversary." He was above the medium height, had a powerful frame, and, like his immortal son, had a wide local reputation as a wrestler.

While learning his trade in the carpenter shop of Joseph Hanks, Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, his own cousin, and the niece of his employer. He probably met her at the house of Richard Berry, with whom she lived, and must have seen a good deal of her at the home of her uncle. At all events, the cousins became engaged; their nuptial bond was signed according to the law on June 10, 1806, and two days later they were married by the Rev. Jesse Head, at the home of Richard Berry, near Beechland, Washington County, Kentucky.

Nancy Hanks was descended from William Hanks, who came to this country in 1699 and settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Four of his five sons moved to Amelia County, Virginia, where they had a large tract of land. One of their descendants, Joseph Hanks, married Nancy Shipley, and in 1789 moved to Kentucky with a large party of his relatives. In 1793 he died, leaving eight children, who were scattered among their relatives, and Nancy, the youngest, when nine years old, found a home with her aunt, Lucy Shipley, the wife of Richard Berry. She is represented to have been a sweet-tempered and handsome woman, of intellect, appearance, and character superior to her position; and could even read and write, which was a remarkable accomplishment among the women of that day. She taught her husband to write his name. But she had no means whatever, being entirely dependent upon her uncle, and it is probable that she was willing to marry even so humble a husband as Thomas Lincoln, for the sake of securing independence and a home.

Thomas Lincoln took his wife to a little log cabin in a hamlet called Elizabethtown, probably because he thought that it would be more congenial for her than his lonely farm in Hardin County, which was fourteen miles away; and perhaps he thought that he could earn a better living by carpenter work than by farming. Here their first child, Sarah, was born about a year after the marriage.

Thomas Lincoln either failed to earn sufficient money to meet his household expenses or grew tired of his carpenter work, for, two years later, he left Elizabethtown and moved his family to his farm near Hodgensville, on the Big South Fork of Nolen Creek. It was a miserable place, of thin, unproductive soil and only partly cleared. Its only attraction was a fine spring of water, shaded by a little grove, which caused it to be called "Rock Spring Farm." The cabin was of the rudest sort, with a single room, a single window, a big fireplace, and a huge outside chimney.

In this cabin Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and here he spent the first four years of his childhood. It was a far reach to the White House. Soon after his nomination for the Presidency he furnished a brief autobiography to Mr. Hicks, an artist who was painting his portrait, in which he said,—

"I was born February 12, 1809, in then Hardin County, Kentucky, at a point within the now County of Larue, a mile or a mile and a half from where Hodgen's mill now is. My parents being dead, and my own memory not serving, I know no means of identifying the precise locality. It was on Nolen Creek.

"A. Lincoln.

"June 14, 1860."

The precise spot has since been clearly identified, and the cabin was still standing after his death.

In 1813 the family removed to a more comfortable home on Knob Creek, six miles from Hodgensville, where Thomas Lincoln bought a better farm of two hundred and thirty-eight acres for one hundred and eighteen pounds and gave his note in payment. This was Abraham Lincoln's second home, and there he lived for four years.

We know little about his childhood, except that it was of continual privation in a cheerless home, for Thomas Lincoln evidently found it difficult to supply his family with food and clothing. Mr. Lincoln seldom talked freely of those days, even to his most intimate friends, although from remarks which he dropped from time to time they judged that the impressions of his first years were indelible upon his temperament and contributed to his melancholy. On one occasion, being asked if he remembered anything about the War of 1812, he said that when a child, returning from fishing one day, he met a soldier in the road and, having been admonished by his mother that everybody should be good to the soldiers, he gave him his fish.

Thomas and Nancy Lincoln had three children. Sarah, the eldest, at the age of fourteen married Aaron Griggsby and died in childbirth a year later. Thomas, the third child, died when only three days old.

When Abraham was about seven years old his father became restless and went across the river into Indiana to look for a new home. It has been represented by some of Lincoln's biographers that the motive of his removal was his dislike of slavery; that he wished to remove his son from its influence; but Lincoln attributed the determination to other reasons, particularly his father's difficulty in securing a valid title to his land. It is quite as probable that, like other men of his temperament, he thought he could do better in a new place; like other rolling stones, that he could gather more moss in a new soil. He found a purchaser for his farm who gave him in payment twenty dollars in money and ten barrels of whiskey, which Thomas Lincoln loaded upon a flat-boat, with his household furniture, floating it down Knob Creek to Rolling Fork, to Salt River, to the Ohio River, and down the Ohio to Thompson's Ferry in Perry County, Indiana. The boat upset on the way and part of the whiskey and some of his carpenter tools were lost. He plunged into the forest, found a location that suited him about sixteen miles from the river, called Pigeon Creek, where he left his property with a settler, and, as his boat could not float upstream, he sold it and walked back to Hodgensville to get his wife and two children. He secured a wagon and two horses, in which he carried his family and whatever of his household effects were then remaining.

Arriving at his location, which was a piece of timber land a mile and a half east of what is now Gentryville, Spencer County, he built a log cabin fourteen feet square, open to the weather on one side, and without windows or chimney. This was Abraham Lincoln's third home, and the family lived in that rude, primitive way for more than a year, managing to raise a patch of corn and a few vegetables during the following summer, which, with corn meal ground at a hand grist-mill seven miles away, were their chief food. Game, however, was abundant. The streams were full of fish and wild fruits could be gathered in the forest. The future President of the United States slept upon a heap of dry leaves in a narrow loft at one end of the cabin, to which he climbed by means of pegs driven into the wall. A year after his arrival Thomas Lincoln entered the quarter section of land he occupied and made his first payment under what was familiarly known as the "two-dollar-an-acre law," but it was eleven years before he could pay enough to obtain a patent for half of it. He then erected a permanent home of logs which was comparatively comfortable and was perhaps as good as those occupied by most of his neighbors.

In the fall of 1818 the little community of pioneers was almost exterminated by an epidemic known as "milk sickness," and among the victims was Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who was buried with her neighbors in a little clearing in the forest in a coffin made of green lumber, cut with a whip-saw by her husband. There were no ceremonies at her burial, but several months later Abraham, then ten years old, wrote to Parson David Elkin, the itinerant Free-will Baptist preacher at Hodgensville, of his mother's death, and begged him to come to Indiana and preach her funeral sermon. Nancy Lincoln must have been highly esteemed or this poor parson would not have come a hundred miles through the wilderness in answer to this summons from her child, for several months later he appeared according to appointment, and all the settlers for many miles around assembled to hear him. It was the most important event that had ever occurred in the community and was remembered longer than any other.

The death of Mrs. Lincoln left the child Sarah, then only eleven years old, to care for the household, and, with the assistance of her brother, she struggled through the next year until the autumn of 1819, when their father returned to Hodgensville and married Sally Bush Johnston, a widow with three children (John, Sarah, and Matilda), whom he had courted before he married Nancy Hanks. She seems to have been a woman of uncommon energy and nobility of character, and in after-life her step-son paid her a worthy tribute when he said that the strongest influence which stimulated and guided him in his ambition came from her and from his own mother. Under her management conditions improved. She brought a little property and some household goods into the family as well as three children, stimulated her husband to industry, and taught his children habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. There was never any friction between her and her step-children, and her own brood, John, Sarah, and Matilda, were received cordially and treated with affection. Nor in their after-lives was any distinction made by either of the parents. The step-mother recognized in Abraham a boy of unusual talent, and encouraged and assisted him by every means within her power.

Abraham's life was spent at hard labor. He was a boy of unusual stature and, from the time he was ten years old, did a man's work. He learned all the tricks in the trades that a pioneer's son must know; hired out upon the neighboring farms when there was nothing for him to do at home, and his wages (twenty-five cents a day) were paid to his father. He cared little for amusement, and hunting, which was the chief recreation of young men of his age, had no attractions for him. In his brief autobiography, which was prepared for the newspapers the day after his nomination for the Presidency, he says,—

"A flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through the cracks and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game." He joined in the rude amusements and sports of the community like other boys and enjoyed them. His quick intelligence, ready sympathy, wit, humor, and generous disposition made him a great favorite. He was the best talker and story-teller in the neighborhood. His tall stature and unusual strength made him a leader in athletic sports, and his studious habits and retentive memory gave him an advantage among his comrades, a few of whom had a little, but the most of them no education. His less gifted comrades recognized his ability and superiority; they learned to accept his opinions and to respect his judgment. He became an instructor as well as a leader, and the local traditions represent him as a sort of intellectual phenomenon, whose wit, anecdotes, doggerel verses, practical jokes, muscular strength, and skill made him the wonder of the community and are a part of the early history of that section.

When he was sixteen he operated a ferry-boat at the mouth of Anderson's Creek, transporting passengers across the Ohio River, and it was then that he earned the first money that he could claim as his own. One evening in the White House, while he was President, he told the story to several members of his Cabinet, and Mr. Secretary Seward gives the following account of it:

"I was contemplating my new flat-boat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any particular, when two men came down to the shore in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different boats singled out mine, and asked: 'Who owns this?' I answered, somewhat modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks out to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was glad to have the chance of earning something. I supposed that each of them would give me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flat-boat, and the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamer.

"They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks and put them on deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar and threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. Gentlemen, you may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me a trifle; but it was the most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day—that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed fairer and wider before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that time."

When he was nineteen Mr. Gentry, the most prominent man in the neighborhood, from whom the town of Gentryville was named, and who kept the "store," embarked in a new enterprise, and sent Abraham with his son Allen upon a flat-boat to New Orleans with a load of bacon, corn meal, and other provisions, paying him eight dollars a month and his passage home on a steamboat. Thus the future President obtained his first glimpse of the world outside the Indiana forest, and the impressions left upon his mind by this experience were never effaced. It was the beginning of a new life for him and the awakening of new ambitions.

"He was a hired man merely," wrote Lincoln of himself nearly thirty years afterwards, "and he and a son of the owner, without any other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the 'cargo load,' as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar-coast, and one night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the mêlée, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then 'cut cable,' 'weighed anchor,' and left."

The prairies of Illinois were becoming a great temptation to pioneers in those days, and the restless disposition of Thomas Lincoln could not be restrained; so he and several of his relatives joined the migration, making a party of thirteen. Lincoln himself tells the story in these words:

"March 1st, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year, his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his step-mother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois. Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams, and Abraham drove one of the teams. They reached the county of Macon, and stopped there some time within the same month of March. His father and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timber land and prairie, about ten miles westerly from Decatur. Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it in the same year."