The month in New Orleans passed swiftly, and in June, 1831, Lincoln and his companions took passage up the river. He did not return, however, in the usual way of the river boatman “out of a job.” According to his own way of putting it, “during this boat-enterprise acquaintance with Offutt, who was previously an entire stranger, he conceived a liking for Abraham, and believing he could turn him to account, he contracted with him to act as a clerk for him on his return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and mill at New Salem.” The store and mill were, however, so far only in Offutt’s imagination, and Lincoln had to drift about until his employer was ready for him. He made a short visit to his father and mother, now in Coles County, near Charleston (fever and ague had driven the Lincolns from their first home in Macon County), and then, in July, 1831, he went to New Salem, where, as he says, he “stopped indefinitely, and for the first time, as it were, by himself.”
MAP OF NEW SALEM.—MADE ESPECIALLY FOR THIS WORK.
Map drawn by J. McCan Davis, aided by surviving inhabitants of New Salem. Dr. John Allen was the leading physician of New Salem. He was a Yankee, and was at first looked upon with suspicion, but he was soon conducting a Sunday-school and temperance society, though strongly opposed by the conservative church people. Dr. Allen attended Ann Rutledge in her last illness. He was thrifty, and, moving to Petersburg in 1840, became wealthy. He died in 1860. Dr. Francis Regnier was a rival physician and a respected citizen. Samuel Hill and John McNeill (whose real name subsequently proved to be McNamar) operated a general store next to Berry and Lincoln’s grocery. Mr. Hill also owned the carding-machine. He moved his store to Petersburg in 1839, and engaged in business there, dying quite wealthy. Jack Kelso followed a variety of callings, being occasionally a school-teacher, now and then a grocery clerk, and always a fisher and hunter. He was a man of some culture, and when warmed by liquor, quoted Shakespeare and Burns profusely, a habit which won for him the close friendship of Lincoln. Joshua Miller was a blacksmith, and lived in the same house with Kelso—a double house. He is said to be still living, somewhere in Nebraska. Miller and Kelso were brothers-in-law. Philemon Morris was a tinner. Henry Onstott was a cooper by trade. He was an elder in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and meetings were often held at his house. Rev. John Berry, father of Lincoln’s partner, frequently preached there. Robert Johnson was a wheelwright, and his wife took in weaving. Martin Waddell was a hatter. He was the best-natured man in town, Lincoln possibly excepted. The Trent brothers, who succeeded Berry and Lincoln as proprietors of the store, worked in his shop for a time. William Clary, one of the first settlers of New Salem, was one of a numerous family, most of whom lived in the vicinity of “Clary’s Grove.” Isaac Burner was the father of Daniel Green Burner, Berry and Lincoln’s clerk. Alexander Ferguson worked at odd jobs. He had two brothers, John and Elijah. Isaac Gollaher lived in a house belonging to John Ferguson. “Row” Herndon, at whose house Lincoln boarded for a year or more after going to New Salem, moved to the country after selling his store to Berry and Lincoln. John Cameron, one of the founders of the town, was a Presbyterian preacher and a highly esteemed citizen.
The village of New Salem, the scene of Lincoln’s mercantile career, was one of the many little towns which, in the pioneer days, sprang up along the Sangamon River, a stream then looked upon as navigable and as destined to be counted among the highways of commerce. Twenty miles northwest of Springfield, strung along the left bank of the Sangamon, parted by hollows and ravines, is a row of high hills. On one of these—a long, narrow ridge, beginning with a sharp and sloping point near the river, running south, and parallel with the stream a little way, and then, reaching its highest point, making a sudden turn to the west, and gradually widening until lost in the prairie—stood this frontier village. The crooked river for a short distance comes from the east, and, seemingly surprised at meeting the bluff, abruptly changes its course, and flows to the north. Across the river the bottom stretches out half a mile back to the highlands. New Salem, founded in 1829 by James Rutledge and John Cameron, and a dozen years later a deserted village, is rescued from oblivion only by the fact that Lincoln was once one of its inhabitants. His first sight of the town had been in April, 1831, when he and his crew had been detained in getting their flatboat over the Rutledge and Cameron mill-dam. When Lincoln walked into New Salem, three months later, he was not altogether a stranger, for the people remembered him as the ingenious flat-boatman who had freed his boat from water (and thus enabled it to get over the dam) by resorting to the miraculous expedient of boring a hole in the bottom.
WILLIAM G. GREENE.
William G. Greene was one of the earliest friends of Lincoln at New Salem. He stood on the bank of the Sangamon River on the 19th of April, 1831, and watched Lincoln bore a hole in the bottom of the flatboat which had lodged on the mill-dam, so that the water might run out. A few months later he and Lincoln were both employed by the enterprising Denton Offutt as clerks in the store and managers of the mill which had been leased by Offutt. It was William G. Greene who, returning home from college at Jacksonville on a vacation, brought Richard Yates with him, and introduced him to Lincoln, the latter being found stretched out on the cellar door of Bowling Green’s cabin, reading a book. Mr. Greene was born in Tennessee in 1812, and went to Illinois in 1822. After the disappearance of New Salem he removed to Tallula, a few miles away, where in after years he engaged in the banking business. He died in 1894, after amassing a fortune.
Offutt’s goods had not arrived when Mr. Lincoln reached New Salem; and he “loafed” about, so those who remember his arrival say, good-naturedly taking a hand in whatever he could find to do, and in his droll way making friends of everybody. By chance, a bit of work fell to him almost at once, which introduced him generally and gave him an opportunity to make a name in the neighborhood. It was election day. The village school-master, Mentor Graham by name, was clerk, but the assistant was ill. Looking about for some one to help him, Mr. Graham saw a tall stranger loitering around the polling-place, and called to him, “Can you write?” “Yes,” said the stranger, “I can make a few rabbit tracks.” Mr. Graham evidently was satisfied with the answer, for he promptly initiated him; and he filled his place not only to the satisfaction of his employer, but also to the delectation of the loiterers about the polls, for whenever things dragged he immediately began “to spin out a stock of Indiana yarns.” So droll were they that years afterward men who listened to Lincoln that day repeated them to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his story-telling.
His next work was to pilot down the Sangamon and Illinois rivers, as far as Beardstown, a flatboat bearing the family and goods of a pioneer bound for Texas. At Beardstown he found Offutt’s goods, waiting to be taken to New Salem. As he footed his way home he met two men with a wagon and ox-team going for the goods. Offutt had expected Lincoln to wait at Beardstown until the ox-team arrived, and the teamsters, not having any credentials, asked Lincoln to give them an order for the goods. This, sitting down by the roadside, he wrote out; and one of the men used to relate that it contained a misspelled word, which he corrected.
A NEW SALEM SPINNING-WHEEL.
The precise date of the opening of Denton Offutt’s store is not known. We only know that on July 8, 1831, the County Commissioners’ Court of Sangamon County granted Offutt a license to retail merchandise at New Salem, for which he paid five dollars, a fee which supposed him to have one thousand dollars’ worth of goods in stock. When the oxen and their drivers returned with the goods, the store was opened in a little log house on the brink of the hill, almost over the river.
A NEW SALEM INTERIOR, SHOWING GENUINE NEW SALEM COSTUMES AND FURNITURE STILL EXTANT.
Reproduced by permission from “Menard-Salem-Lincoln Souvenir Album,” Petersburg, Illinois, 1893.
The frontier store filled a unique place. Usually it was a “general store,” and on its shelves were found most of the articles needed in a community of pioneers. But to be a place for the sale of dry goods and groceries was not its only function; it was a kind of intellectual and social centre. It was the common meeting-place of the farmers, the happy refuge of the village loungers. No subject was unknown there. The habitués of the place were equally at home in discussing politics, religion, or sports. Stories were told, jokes were cracked and laughed at, and the news contained in the latest newspaper finding its way into the wilderness was repeated again and again. Such a store was that of Denton Offutt. Lincoln could hardly have chosen surroundings more favorable to the highest development of the art of story-telling, and he had not been there long before his reputation for drollery was established.
But he gained popularity and respect in other ways. There was near the village a settlement called Clary’s Grove. The most conspicuous part of the population was an organization known as the “Clary’s Grove Boys.” They exercised a veritable terror over the neighborhood, and yet they were not a vicious band. Mr. Herndon, who had a cousin living in New Salem at the time, and who knew personally many of the “boys,” says:
“They were friendly and good-natured; they could trench a pond, dig a bog, build a house; they could pray and fight, make a village or create a State. They would do almost anything for sport or fun, love or necessity. Though rude and rough; though life’s forces ran over the edge of the bowl, foaming and sparkling in pure deviltry for deviltry’s sake, yet place before them a poor man who needed their aid, a lame or sick man, a defenceless woman, a widow, or an orphaned child, they melted into sympathy and charity at once. They gave all they had, and willingly toiled or played cards for more. Though there never was under the sun a more generous parcel of rowdies, a stranger’s introduction was likely to be the most unpleasant part of his acquaintance with them.”
VIEW FROM THE TOP OF NEW SALEM HILL.
Denton Offutt, Lincoln’s employer, was just the man to love to boast before such a crowd. He seemed to feel that Lincoln’s physical prowess shed glory on himself, and he declared the country over that his clerk could lift more, throw farther, run faster, jump higher, and wrestle better than any man in Sangamon County. The Clary’s Grove Boys, of course, felt in honor bound to prove this false, and they appointed their best man, one Jack Armstrong, to “throw Abe.” Jack Armstrong was, according to the testimony of all who remember him, a “powerful twister,” “square built and strong as an ox,” “the best-made man that ever lived;” and everybody knew the contest would be close. Lincoln did not like to “tussle and scuffle;” he objected to “woolling and pulling;” but Offutt had gone so far that it became necessary to yield. The match was held on the ground near the grocery. Clary’s Grove and New Salem turned out generally to witness the bout, and betting on the result ran high, the community as a whole staking their jack-knives, tobacco-plugs, and “treats” on Armstrong. The two men had scarcely taken hold of each other before it was evident that the Clary’s Grove champion had met a match. The two men wrestled long and hard, but both kept their feet. Neither could throw the other, and Armstrong, convinced of this, tried a “foul.” Lincoln no sooner realized the game of his antagonist than, furious with indignation, he caught him by the throat and, holding him out at arm’s length, “shook him like a child.” Armstrong’s friends rushed to his aid, and for a moment it looked as if Lincoln would be routed by sheer force of numbers. But he held his own so bravely that the “boys,” in spite of their sympathies, were filled with admiration. What bade fair to be a general fight ended in a general hand-shake, even Jack Armstrong declaring that Lincoln was the “best fellow who ever broke into the camp.” From that day, at the cock-fights and horse-races, which were their common sports, he became the chosen umpire; and when the entertainment broke up in a row—a not uncommon occurrence—he acted the peacemaker without suffering the peacemaker’s usual fate. Such was his reputation with the “Clary’s Grove Boys,” after three months in New Salem, that when the fall muster came off he was elected captain.
MENTOR GRAHAM.
Mentor Graham was the New Salem school-master. He it was who assisted Lincoln in mastering Kirkham’s Grammar, and later gave him valuable assistance when Lincoln was learning the theory of surveying. He taught in a little log schoolhouse on a hill south of the village, just across Green’s Rocky Branch. Among his pupils was Ann Rutledge, and the school was often visited by Lincoln. In 1845 Mentor Graham was defendant in a lawsuit in which Lincoln and Herndon were attorneys for the plaintiff, Nancy Green. It appears from the declaration, written by Lincoln’s own hand, that on October 28, 1844, Mentor Graham gave his note to Nancy Green for one hundred dollars, with John Owen and Andrew Beerup as sureties, payable twelve months after date. The note not being paid when due, suit was brought. That Lincoln, even as an attorney, should sue Mentor Graham may seem strange; but it is no surprise when it is explained that the plaintiff was the widow of Bowling Green—the woman who, with her husband, had comforted Lincoln in an hour of grief. Justice, too, in this case was clearly on her side. The lawsuit seems never to have disturbed the friendly relations between Lincoln and Mentor Graham. The latter’s admiration for the former was unbounded to the day of his death. Mentor Graham lived on his farm near the ruins of New Salem until 1860, when he removed to Petersburg. There he lived until 1885, when he removed to Greenview, Illinois. Later he went to South Dakota, where he died about 1892, at the ripe old age of ninety-odd years.
Lincoln showed soon that if he was unwilling to indulge in “woolling and pulling” for amusement, he did not object to it in a case of honor. A man came into the store one day when women were present, and used profane language. Lincoln asked him to stop; but the man persisted, swearing that nobody should prevent his saying what he wanted to. The women gone, the man began to abuse Lincoln so hotly that the latter finally said, “Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I might as well whip you as any other man;” and going outdoors with the fellow, he threw him on the ground, and rubbed smart-weed in his eyes until he bellowed for mercy. New Salem’s sense of chivalry was touched, and enthusiasm over Lincoln increased.
MODEL OF FIRST PLOUGH MADE IN MENARD COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
Reproduced by permission from “Menard-Salem-Lincoln Souvenir Album,” Petersburg, Illinois, 1893.
His honesty excited no less admiration. Two incidents seem to have particularly impressed the community. Having discovered on one occasion that he had taken six and a quarter cents too much from a customer, he walked three miles that evening, after his store was closed, to return the money. Again, he weighed out a half-pound of tea, as he supposed. It was night, and this was the last thing he did before closing up. On entering in the morning he discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw his mistake, and, closing up shop, hurried off to deliver the remainder of the tea. This unusual regard for the rights of others soon won him the title of “Honest Abe.”
A NEW SALEM CHAIR.
This chair is now in the collection of Mr. Louis Vanuxem of Philadelphia. It was originally owned by Caleb Carmen of New Salem, and was once repaired by Abraham Lincoln.
As soon as the store was fairly under way, Lincoln began to look about for books. Since leaving Indiana, in March, 1830, he had had, in his drifting life, little leisure or opportunity for study, though he had had a great deal for observation. Nevertheless his desire to learn had increased, and his ambition to be somebody had been encouraged. In that time he had found that he really was superior to many of those who were called the “great” men of the country. Soon after entering Macon County, in March, 1830, when he was only twenty-one years old, he had found he could make a better speech than at least one man who was before the public. A candidate had come along where John Hanks and he were at work, and, as John Hanks tells the story, the man made a speech. “It was a bad one, and I said Abe could beat it. I turned down a box, and Abe made his speech. The other man was a candidate, Abe wasn’t. Abe beat him to death, his subject being the navigation of the Sangamon River. The man, after Abe’s speech was through, took him aside, and asked him where he had learned so much and how he could do so well. Abe replied, stating his manner and method of reading, what he had read. The man encouraged him to persevere.”
He had found that people listened to him, that they quoted his opinions, and that his friends were already saying that he was able to fill any position. Offutt even declared the country over that “Abe” knew more than any man in the United States, and that some day he would be President.
Under this stimulus Lincoln’s ambition increased. “I have talked with great men,” he told his fellow-clerk and friend Greene, “and I do not see how they differ from others.” He made up his mind to put himself before the public, and talked of his plans to his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walked seven or eight miles to debating clubs. “Practising polemics” was what he called the exercise. He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. Grammar was what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the school-master, and asked his advice. “If you are going before the public,” Mr. Graham told him, “you ought to do it.” But where could he get a grammar? There was but one, said Mr. Graham, in the neighborhood, and that was six miles away. Without waiting for further information, the young man rose from the breakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, and borrowed this rare copy of Kirkham’s Grammar. From that time on for weeks he gave his leisure to mastering its contents. Frequently he asked his friend Greene to hold the book while he recited, and when puzzled he would consult Mr. Graham.
Lincoln’s eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood became interested. The Greenes lent him books, the school-master kept him in mind and helped him as he could, and the village cooper let him come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright to read by at night. It was not long before the grammar was mastered. “Well,” Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk Greene, “if that’s what they call a science, I think I’ll go at another.”
Before the winter was ended he had become the most popular man in New Salem. Although he was but twenty-two years of age in February, 1832; had never been at school an entire year; had never made a speech, except in debating clubs or by the roadside; had read only the books he could pick up, and known only the men of the poor, out-of-the-way towns in which he had lived, yet, “encouraged by his great popularity among his immediate neighbors,” as he says, he announced himself, in March, 1832, as a candidate for the General Assembly of the State.