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ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A HISTORY
BY JOHN G. NICOLAY AND JOHN HAY
VOLUME ONE
TO THE HONORABLE ROBERT TODD LINCOLN
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED
IN TOKEN OF
A LIFE-LONG FRIENDSHIP
AND ESTEEM
AUTHORS' PREFACE
A generation born since Abraham Lincoln died has already reached
manhood and womanhood. Yet there are millions still living who
sympathized with him in his noble aspirations, who labored with him in
his toilsome life, and whose hearts were saddened by his tragic death.
It is the almost unbroken testimony of his contemporaries that by
virtue of certain high traits of character, in certain momentous lines
of purpose and achievement, he was incomparably the greatest man of
his time. The deliberate judgment of those who knew him has hardened
into tradition; for although but twenty-five years have passed since
he fell by the bullet of the assassin, the tradition is already
complete. The voice of hostile faction is silent, or unheeded; even
criticism is gentle and timid. If history had said its last word, if
no more were to be known of him than is already written, his fame,
however lacking in definite outline, however distorted by fable, would
survive undiminished to the latest generations. The blessings of an
enfranchised race would forever hail him as their liberator; the
nation would acknowledge him as the mighty counselor whose patient
courage and wisdom saved the life of the republic in its darkest hour;
and illuminating his proud eminence as orator, statesman, and ruler,
there would forever shine around his memory the halo of that tender
humanity and Christian charity in which he walked among his fellow-
countrymen as their familiar companion and friend.
It is not, therefore, with any thought of adding materially to his
already accomplished renown that we have written the work which we now
offer to our fellow-citizens. But each age owes to its successors the
truth in regard to its own annals. The young men who have been born
since Sumter was fired on have a right to all their elders know of the
important events they came too late to share in. The life and fame of
Lincoln will not have their legitimate effect of instruction and
example unless the circumstances among which he lived and found his
opportunities are placed in their true light before the men who never
saw him.
To write the life of this great American in such a way as to show his
relations to the times in which he moved, the stupendous issues he
controlled, the remarkable men by whom he was surrounded, has been the
purpose which the authors have diligently pursued for many years. We
can say nothing of the result of our labor; only those who have been
similarly employed can appreciate the sense of inadequate performance
with which we regard what we have accomplished. We claim for our work
that we have devoted to it twenty years of almost unremitting
assiduity; that we have neglected no means in our power to ascertain
the truth; that we have rejected no authentic facts essential to a
candid story; that we have had no theory to establish, no personal
grudge to gratify, no unavowed objects to subserve. We have aimed to
write a sufficiently full and absolutely honest history of a great man
and a great time; and although we take it for granted that we have
made mistakes, that we have fallen into such errors and inaccuracies
as are unavoidable in so large a work, we claim there is not a line in
all these volumes dictated by malice or unfairness.
Our desire to have this work placed under the eyes of the greatest
possible number of readers induced us to accept the generous offer of
"The Century Magazine" to print it first in that periodical. In this
way it received, as we expected, the intelligent criticism of a very
large number of readers, thoroughly informed in regard to the events
narrated, and we have derived the greatest advantage from the
suggestions and corrections which have been elicited during the serial
publication, which began in November, 1886, and closed early in 1890.
We beg, here, to make our sincere acknowledgments to the hundreds of
friendly critics who have furnished us with valuable information.
As "The Century" had already given, during several years, a
considerable portion of its pages to the elucidation and discussion of
the battles and campaigns of the civil war, it was the opinion of its
editor, in which we coincided, that it was not advisable to print in
the magazine the full narrative sketch of the war which we had
prepared. We omitted also a large number of chapters which, although
essential to a history of the time, and directly connected with the
life of Mr. Lincoln, were still episodical in their nature, and were
perhaps not indispensable to a comprehension of the principal events
of his administration. These are all included in the present volumes;
they comprise additional chapters almost equal in extent and fully
equal in interest to those which have already been printed in "The
Century." Interspersed throughout the work in their proper connection
and sequence, and containing some of the most important of Mr.
Lincoln's letters, they lend breadth and unity to the historical
drama.
We trust it will not be regarded as presumptuous if we say a word in
relation to the facilities we have enjoyed and the methods we have
used in the preparation of this work. We knew Mr. Lincoln intimately
before his election to the Presidency. We came from Illinois to
Washington with him, and remained at his side and in his service--
separately or together--until the day of his death. We were the daily
and nightly witnesses of the incidents, the anxieties, the fears, and
the hopes which pervaded the Executive Mansion and the National
Capital. The President's correspondence, both official and private,
passed through our hands; he gave us his full confidence. We had
personal acquaintance and daily official intercourse with Cabinet
Officers, Members of Congress, Governors, and Military and Naval
Officers of all grades, whose affairs brought them to the White House.
It was during these years of the war that we formed the design of
writing this history and began to prepare for it. President Lincoln
gave it his sanction and promised his cordial cooperation. After
several years' residence in Europe, we returned to this country and
began the execution of our long-cherished plan. Mr. Robert T. Lincoln
gave into our keeping all the official and private papers and
manuscripts in his possession, to which we have added all the material
we could acquire by industry or by purchase. It is with the advantage,
therefore, of a wide personal acquaintance with all the leading
participants of the war, and of perfect familiarity with the
manuscript material, and also with the assistance of the vast bulk of
printed records and treatises which have accumulated since 1865, that
we have prosecuted this work to its close.
If we gained nothing else by our long association with Mr. Lincoln we
hope at least that we acquired from him the habit of judging men and
events with candor and impartiality. The material placed in our hands
was unexampled in value and fullness; we have felt the obligation of
using it with perfect fairness. We have striven to be equally just to
friends and to adversaries; where the facts favor our enemies we have
recorded them ungrudgingly; where they bear severely upon statesmen
and generals whom we have loved and honored we have not scrupled to
set them forth, at the risk of being accused of coldness and
ingratitude to those with whom we have lived on terms of intimate
friendship. The recollection of these friendships will always be to us
a source of pride and joy; but in this book we have known no
allegiance but to the truth. We have in no case relied upon our own
memory of the events narrated, though they may have passed under our
own eyes; we have seen too often the danger of such a reliance in the
reminiscences of others. We have trusted only our diaries and
memoranda of the moment; and in the documents and reports we have
cited we have used incessant care to secure authenticity. So far as
possible, every story has been traced to its source, and every
document read in the official record or the original manuscript.
We are aware of the prejudice which exists against a book written by
two persons, but we feel that in our case the disadvantages of
collaboration are reduced to the minimum. Our experiences, our
observations, our material, have been for twenty years not merely
homogeneous--they have been identical. Our plans were made with
thorough concert; our studies of the subject were carried on together;
we were able to work simultaneously without danger of repetition or
conflict. The apportionment of our separate tasks has been dictated
purely by convenience; the division of topics between us has been
sometimes for long periods, sometimes almost for alternate chapters.
Each has written an equal portion of the work; while consultation and
joint revision have been continuous, the text of each remains
substantially unaltered. It is in the fullest sense, and in every
part, a joint work. We each assume responsibility, not only for the
whole, but for all the details, and whatever credit or blame the
public may award our labors is equally due to both.
We commend the result of so many years of research and diligence to
all our countrymen, North and South, in the hope that it may do
something to secure a truthful history of the great struggle which
displayed on both sides the highest qualities of American manhood, and
may contribute in some measure to the growth and maintenance
throughout all our borders of that spirit of freedom and nationality
for which Abraham Lincoln lived and died.
John G. Nicolay
John Hay
[signatures]
ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I
ABRAHAM LINCOLN From a photograph taken about 1860 by Hesler, of
Chicago; from the original negative owned by George B. Ayres,
Philadelphia.
LAND WARRANT, ISSUED TO ABRAHAM LINKHORN (LINCOLN)
FAC-SIMILE FROM THE FIELD-BOOK OF DANIEL BOONE
SURVEYOR'S CERTIFICATE FOR ABRAHAM LINKHORN (LINCOLN)
HOUSE IN WHICH THOMAS LINCOLN AND NANCY HANKS WERE MARRIED
FAC-SIMILE OF THE MARRIAGE BOND OF THOMAS LINCOLN
CERTIFICATE, OR MARRIAGE LIST, CONTAINING THE NAMES OF THOMAS LINCOLN
AND NANCY HANKS
SARAH BUSH LINCOLN AT THE AGE OF 76 From a photograph in possession of
William H. Herndon.
CABIN ON GOOSE-NEST PRAIRIE, ILL., IN WHICH THOMAS LINCOLN LIVED AND
DIED
MODEL OF LINCOLN'S INVENTION FOR BUOYING VESSELS
FAC-SIMILE OF DRAWINGS IN THE PATENT OFFICE
LEAF FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S EXERCISE BOOK
SOLDIER'S DISCHARGE FROM THE BLACK HAWK WAR, SIGNED BY A. LINCOLN,
CAPTAIN
BLACK HAWK. From a portrait by Charles B. King, from McKenny & Hall's
"Indian Tribes of North America."
STEPHEN T. LOGAN From the portrait in possession of his daughter, Mrs.
L. H. Coleman.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S SURVEYING INSTRUMENTS, SADDLE BAG, ETC
PLAN OF ROADS SURVEYED BY A. LINCOLN AND OTHERS
FAC-SIMILE OF LINCOLN'S REPORT OF THE ROAD SURVEY
O. H. BROWNING From a photograph by Waide.
MARTIN VAN BUREN From a photograph by Brady.
COL. E. D. BAKER From a photograph by Brady, about 1861.
LINCOLN AND STUART'S LAW-OFFICE, SPRINGFIELD
LINCOLN'S BOOKCASE AND INKSTAND From the Keyes Lincoln Memorial
Collection, Chicago.
GLOBE TAVERN, SPRINGFIELD Where Lincoln lived after his marriage.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON From a painting, in 1841, by Henry Inman, owned
by Benjamin Harrison.
FAC-SIMILE OF MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
JOSHUA SPEED AND WIFE From a painting by Healy, about 1864.
HOUSE IN WHICH ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS MARRIED
GEN. JAMES SHIELDS From a photograph owned by David Delany.
HENRY CLAY After a photograph by Rockwood, from the daguerreotype
owned by Alfred Hassack.
ZACHARY TAYLOR From the painting by Vanderlyn in the Corcoran Gallery.
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS From a photograph by Brady.
DAVID DAVIS From a photograph by Brady.
JAMES K. POLK From a photograph by Brady.
FRANKLIN PIERCE From a photograph by Brady.
LYMAN TRUMBULL Prom a photograph by Brady.
OWEN LOVEJOY From a photograph.
DAVID E. ATCHISON From a daguerreotype.
ANDREW H. REEDER From a photograph by R. Knecht.
JAMES H. LANE By permission of the Strowbridge Lithographing Co. MAPS
MAP SHOWING LOCALITIES CONNECTED WITH EARLY EVENTS IN THE LINCOLN
FAMILY
MAP OF NEW SALEM, ILL., AND VICINITY
MAP OF THE BOUNDARIES OF TEXAS
HISTORICAL MAP OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1854
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOL. I
CHAPTER I. LINEAGE The Lincolns in America. Intimacy with the Boones.
Kentucky in 1780. Death of Abraham Lincoln the Pioneer. Marriage of
Thomas Lincoln. Birth and Childhood of Abraham
CHAPTER II. INDIANA Thomas Lincoln leaves Kentucky. Settles at
Gentryville. Death of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Sarah Bush Johnston.
Pioneer Life in Indiana. Sports and Superstitions of the Early
Settlers. The Youth of Abraham. His Great Physical Strength. His
Voyage to New Orleans. Removal to Illinois
CHAPTER III. ILLINOIS IN 1830 The Winter of the Deep Snow. The Sudden
Change. Pioneer Life. Religion and Society. French and Indians.
Formation of the Political System. The Courts. Lawyers and
Politicians. Early Superannuation
CHAPTER IV. NEW SALEM Denton Offutt. Lincoln's Second Trip to New
Orleans. His Care of His Family. Death of Thomas Lincoln. Offutt's
Store in New Salem. Lincoln's Initiation by the "Clary's Grove Boys."
The Voyage of the _Talisman_
CHAPTER V. LINCOLN IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR Black Hawk. The Call for
Volunteers. Lincoln Elected Captain. Stillman's Run. Lincoln
Reenlists. The Spy Battalion. Black Hawk's Defeat. Disbandment of the
Volunteers
CHAPTER VI. SURVEYOR AND REPRESENTATIVE Lincoln's Candidacy for the
Legislature. Runs as a Whig. Defeated. Berry and Lincoln Merchants.
Lincoln Begins the Study of Law. Postmaster. Surveyor. His Popularity.
Elected to the Legislature, 1834
CHAPTER VII. LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE Lincoln's First Session in the
Legislature. Douglas and Peek. Lincoln Reelected. Bedlam Legislation.
Schemes of Railroad Building. Removal of the Capital to Springfield
CHAPTER VIII. THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST The Pro-Slavery Sentiment in
Illinois. Attempt to Open the State to Slavery. Victory of the Free-
State Party. Reaction. Death of Lovejoy. Pro-Slavery Resolutions. The
Protest
CHAPTER IX. COLLAPSE OF "THE SYSTEM" Lincoln in Springfield. The
Failure of the Railroad System. Fall of the Banks. First Collision
with Douglas. Tampering with the Judiciary
CHAPTER X. EARLY LAW PRACTICE Early Legal Customs. Lincoln's
Popularity in Law and Politics. A Speech in 1840. The Harrison
Campaign. Correspondence with Stuart. Harrison Elected. Melancholia
CHAPTER XI. MARRIAGE Courtship and Engagement, The Pioneer
Temperament. Lincoln's Love Affairs. Joshua F. Speed. Lincoln's Visit
to Kentucky. Correspondence with Speed. Marriage
CHAPTER XII. THE SHIELDS DUEL A Political Satire. James Shields.
Lincoln Challenged. A Fight Arranged and Prevented. Subsequent
Wranglings. The Whole Matter Forgotten. An Admonition
CHAPTER XIII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1844 Partnership with Stephen T. Logan.
Lincoln Becomes a Lawyer. Temperance Movement. Baker and Lincoln
Candidates for the Whig Nomination to Congress. Baker Successful. Clay
Nominated for President. The Texas Question. Clay Defeated
CHAPTER XIV. LINCOLN'S CAMPAIGN FOR CONGRESS Schemes of Annexation.
Opposition at the North. Outbreak of War. Lincoln Nominated for
Congress. His Opponent Peter Cartwright. Lincoln Elected. The Whigs in
the War. E. D. Baker in Washington and Mexico
CHAPTER XV. THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS Robert C. Winthrop Chosen Speaker.
Debates on the War. Advantage of the Whigs. Acquisition of Territory.
The Wilmot Proviso. Lincoln's Resolutions. Nomination of Taylor for
President. Cass the Democratic Candidate. Lincoln's Speech, July 27,
1848. Taylor Elected
CHAPTER XVI. A FORTUNATE ESCAPE Independent Action of Northern
Democrats. Lincoln's Plan for Emancipation in the District of
Columbia. His Bill Fails to Receive Consideration. A Similar Bill
Signed by Him Fifteen Years Later. Logan Nominated for Congress and
Defeated. Lincoln an Applicant for Office. The Fascination of
Washington
CHAPTER XVII. THE CIRCUIT LAWYER The Growth and Change of Legal
Habits. Lincoln on the Circuit. His Power and Value as a Lawyer.
Opinion of David Davis. Of Judge Drummond. Incidents of the Courts.
Lincoln's Wit and Eloquence. His Life at Home
CHAPTER XVIII. THE BALANCE OF POWER Origin of the Slavery Struggle.
The Ordinance of 1787. The Compromises of the Constitution. The
Missouri Compromise. Cotton and the Cotton-Gin. The Race between Free
and Slave States. The Admission of Texas. The Wilmot Proviso. New
Mexico and California. The Compromise Measures of 1850. Finality
CHAPTER XIX. REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE Stephen A. Douglas. Old
Fogies and Young America. The Nomination of Pierce. The California
Gold Discovery. The National Platforms on the Slavery Issue.
Organization of Western Territories. The Three Nebraska Bills. The
Caucus Agreement of the Senate Committee. Dixon's Repealing Amendment.
Douglas Adopts Dixon's Proposition. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act
CHAPTER XX. THE DRIFT OF POLITICS The Storm of Agitation. The Free
Soil Party. The American Party. The Anti-Nebraska Party. Dissolution
of the Whig Party. The Congressional Elections. Democratic Defeat.
Banks Elected Speaker
CHAPTER XXI. LINCOLN AND TRUMBULL The Nebraska Question in Illinois.
Douglas's Chicago Speech. Lincoln Reappears in Politics. Political
Speeches at the State Fair. A Debate between Lincoln and Douglas.
Lincoln's Peoria Speech. An Anti-Nebraska Legislature Elected.
Lincoln's Candidacy for the Senate. Shields and Matteson. Trumbull
Elected Senator. Lincoln's Letter to Robertson
CHAPTER XXII. THE BORDER RUFFIANS The Opening of Kansas Territory.
Andrew H, Reeder Appointed Governor. Atchison's Propaganda. The
Missouri Blue Lodges. The Emigrant Aid Company. The Town of Lawrence
Founded. Governor Reeder's Independent Action. The First Border
Ruffian Invasion. The Election of Whitfield
CHAPTER XXIII. THE BOGUS LAWS Governor Reeder's Census. The Second
Border Ruffian Invasion. Missouri Voters Elect the Kansas Legislature.
Westport and Shawnee Mission. The Governor Convenes the Legislature at
Pawnee. The Legislature Returns to Shawnee Mission. Governor Reeder's
Vetoes. The Governor's Removal. Enactment of the Bogus Laws. Despotic
Statutes. Lecompton Founded
CHAPTER XXIV. THE TOPEKA CONSTITUTION The Bogus Legislature Defines
Kansas Politics. The Big Springs Convention. Ex-Governor Reeder's
Resolutions. Formation of the Free-State Party. A Constitutional
Convention at Topeka. The Topeka Constitution. President Pierce
Proclaims the Topeka Movement Revolutionary. Refusal to Recognize the
Bogus Laws. Chief-Justice Lecompte's Doctrine of Constructive Treason,
Arrests and Indictment of the Free-State Leaders. Colonel Sumner
Disperses the Topeka Legislature
CHAPTER XXV. CIVIL WAR IN KANSAS Wilson Shannon Appointed Governor.
The Law and Order Party Formed at Leavenworth. Sheriff Jones. The
Branson Rescue. The Wakarusa War. Sharps Rifles. Governor Shannon's
Treaty. Guerrilla Leaders and Civil War. The Investigating Committee
of Congress. The Flight of Ex-Governor Reeder. The Border Ruffians
March on Lawrence. Burning of the Free-State Hotel
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
CHAPTER I
LINEAGE
[Sidenote: 1780.]
In the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln, a member of a respectable and well-
to-do family in Rockingham County, Virginia, started westward to
establish himself in the newly-explored country of Kentucky. He
entered several large tracts of fertile land, and returning to
Virginia disposed of his property there, and with his wife and five
children went back to Kentucky and settled in Jefferson County. Little
is known of this pioneer Lincoln or of his father. Most of the records
belonging to that branch of the family were destroyed in the civil
war. Their early orphanage, the wild and illiterate life they led on
the frontier, severed their connection with their kindred in the East.
This, often happened; there are hundreds of families in the West
bearing historic names and probably descended from well-known houses
in the older States or in England, which, by passing through one or
two generations of ancestors who could not read or write, have lost
their continuity with the past as effectually as if a deluge had
intervened between the last century and this. Even the patronymic has
been frequently distorted beyond recognition by slovenly pronunciation
during the years when letters were a lost art, and by the phonetic
spelling of the first boy in the family who learned the use of the
pen. There are Lincolns in Kentucky and Tennessee belonging to the
same stock with the President, whose names are spelled "Linkhorn" and
"Linkhern." All that was known of the emigrant, Abraham Lincoln, by
his immediate descendants was that his progenitors, who were Quakers,
came from Berks County, Pennsylvania, into Virginia, and there throve
and prospered. [Footnote: We desire to express our obligations to
Edwin Salter, Samuel L. Smedley, Samuel Shackford, Samuel W.
Pennypacker, Howard M. Jenkins, and John T. Harris, Jr., for
information and suggestions which have been of use to us in this
chapter.] But we now know, with sufficient clearness, through the
wide-spread and searching luster which surrounds the name, the history
of the migrations of the family since its arrival on this continent,
and the circumstances under which the Virginia pioneer started for
Kentucky.
The first ancestor of the line of whom we have knowledge was Samuel
Lincoln, of Norwich, England, who came to Hingham, Massachusetts, in
1638, and died there. He left a son, Mordecai, whose son, of the same
name,--and it is a name which persists in every branch of the family,
[Footnote: The Lincolns, in naming their children, followed so strict
a tradition that great confusion has arisen in the attempt to trace
their genealogy. For instance, Abraham Lincoln, of Chester County, son
of one Mordecai and brother of another, the President's ancestors,
left a fair estate, by will, to his children, whose names were John,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Mordecai, Rebecca, and Sarah--precisely the
same names we find in three collateral families.]--removed to
Monmouth, New Jersey, and thence to Amity township, now a part of now
a part of Berks County, Pennsylvania, where he died in 1735, fifty
years old. From a copy of his will, recorded in the office of the
Register in Philadelphia, we gather that he was a man of considerable
property. In the inventory of his effects, made after his death, he is
styled by the appraisers, "Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman." His son John
received by his father's will "a certain piece of land lying in the
Jerseys, containing three hundred acres," the other sons and daughters
having been liberally provided for from the Pennsylvania property.
This John Lincoln left New Jersey some years later, and about 1750
established himself in Rockingham County, Virginia. He had five sons,
to whom he gave the names which were traditional in the family:--
Abraham, the pioneer first mentioned,--Isaac, Jacob, Thomas, and John.
Jacob and John remained in Virginia; the former was a soldier in the
War of the Revolution, and took part as lieutenant in a Virginia
regiment at the siege of Yorktown. Isaac went to a place on the
Holston River in Tennessee; Thomas followed his brother to Kentucky,
lived and died there, and his children then emigrated to Tennessee
[Footnote: It is an interesting coincidence for the knowledge of which
we are indebted to Colonel John B. Brownlow, that a minister named
Mordecai Lincoln a relative of the President, performed, on the 17th
of May, 1837, the marriage ceremony of Andrew Johnson, Mr. Lincoln's
succesor, in the Presidency.] With the one memorable exception the
family seem to have been modest, thrifty, unambitious people. Even the
great fame and conspicuousness of the President did not tempt them out
of their retirement. Robert Lincoln, of Hancock County, Illinois, a
cousin--German, became a captain and commissary of volunteers; none of
the others, so far as we know, ever made their existence known to
their powerful kinsman during the years of his glory. [Transcriber's
Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
It was many years after the death of the President that his son
learned the probable circumstances under which the pioneer Lincoln
removed to the West, and the intimate relations which subsisted
between his family and the most celebrated man in early Western
annals. There is little doubt that it was on account of his
association with the, famous Daniel Boone that Abraham Lincoln went to
Kentucky. The families had for a century been closely allied. There
were frequent intermarriages [Footnote: A letter from David J.
Lincoln, of Birdsboro, Berks County, Pennsylvania, to the writers,
says, "My grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, was married to Anna Boone, a
first cousin of Daniel Boone, July 10, 1760." He was half-brother of
John Lincoln, and afterwards became a man of some prominence in
Pennsylvania, serving in the Constitutional Convention in 1789-90.]
among them--both being of Quaker lineage. By the will of Mordecai
Lincoln, to which reference has been made, his "loving friend and
neighbor" George Boone was made a trustee to assist his widow in the
care of the property. Squire Boone, the father of Daniel, was one of
the appraisers who made the inventory of Mordecai Lincoln's estate.
The intercourse between the families was kept up after the Boones had
removed to North Carolina and John Lincoln had gone to Virginia.
Abraham Lincoln, son of John, and grandfather of the President, was
married to Miss Mary Shipley [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote
relocated to chapter end.] in North Carolina. The inducement which led
him to leave Virginia, where his standing and his fortune were
assured, was, in all probability, his intimate family relations with
the great explorer, the hero of the new country of Kentucky, the land
of fabulous richness and unlimited adventure. At a time when the
Eastern States were ringing with the fame of the mighty hunter who was
then in the prime of his manhood, and in the midst of those
achievements which will forever render him one of the most picturesque
heroes in all our annals, it is not to be wondered at that his own
circle of friends should have caught the general enthusiasm and felt
the desire to emulate his career.
Boone's exploration of Kentucky had begun some ten years before
Lincoln set out to follow his trail. In 1769 he made his memorable
journey to that virgin wilderness of whose beauty he always loved to
speak even to his latest breath. During all that year he hunted,
finding everywhere abundance of game. "The buffalo," Boone says, "were
more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements, browsing on
the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on these extensive
plains, fearless because ignorant of the violence of man. Sometimes we
saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were
amazing." In the course of the winter, however, he was captured by the
Indians while hunting with a comrade, and when they had contrived to
escape they never found again any trace of the rest of their party.
But a few days later they saw two men approaching and hailed them with
the hunter's caution, "Hullo, strangers; who are you?" They replied,
"White men and friends." They proved to be Squire Boone and another
adventurer from North Carolina. The younger Boone had made that long
pilgrimage through the trackless woods, led by an instinct of doglike
affection, to find his elder brother and share his sylvan pleasures
and dangers. Their two companions were soon waylaid and killed, and
the Boones spent their long winter in that mighty solitude
undisturbed. In the spring their ammunition, which was to them the
only necessary of life, ran low, and one of them must return to the
settlements to replenish the stock. It need not be said which assumed
this duty; the cadet went uncomplaining on his way, and Daniel spent
three months in absolute loneliness, as he himself expressed it, "by
myself, without bread, salt, or sugar, without company of my fellow-
creatures, or even a horse or dog." He was not insensible to the
dangers of his situation. He never approached his camp without the
utmost precaution, and always slept in the cane-brakes if the signs
were unfavorable. But he makes in his memoirs this curious reflection,
which would seem like affectation in one less perfectly and simply
heroic: "How unhappy such a situation for a man tormented with fear,
which is vain if no danger comes, and if it does, only augments the
pain. It was my happiness to be destitute of this afflicting passion,
with which I had the greatest reason to be afflicted." After his
brother's return, for a year longer they hunted in those lovely wilds,
and then returned to the Yadkin to bring their families to the new
domain. They made the long journey back, five hundred miles, in peace
and safety.
For some time after this Boone took no conspicuous part in the
settlement of Kentucky. The expedition with which he left the Yadkin
in 1773 met with a terrible disaster near Cumberland Gap, in which his
eldest son and five more young men were killed by Indians, and the
whole party, discouraged by the blow, retired to the safer region of
Clinch River. In the mean time the dauntless speculator Richard
Henderson had begun his occupation with all the pomp of viceroyalty.
Harrodsburg had been founded, and corn planted, and a flourishing
colony established at the Falls of the Ohio. In 1774 Boone was called
upon by the Governor of Virginia to escort a party of surveyors
through Kentucky, and on his return was given the command of three
garrisons; and for several years thereafter the history of the State
is the record of his feats of arms. No one ever equaled him in his
knowledge of Indian character, and his influence with the savages was
a mystery to him and to themselves. Three times he fell into their
hands and they did not harm him. Twice they adopted him into their
tribes while they were still on the war-path. Once they took him to
Detroit, [Footnote: Silas Farmer, historiographer of Detroit, informs
us that Daniel Boone was brought there on the 10th of March, 1778, and
that he remained there a month.] to show the Long-Knife chieftains of
King Greorge that they also could exhibit trophies of memorable
prowess, but they refused to give him up even to their British allies.
In no quality of wise woodcraft was he wanting. He could outrun a dog
or a deer; he could thread the woods without food day and night; he
could find his way as easily as the panther could. Although a great
athlete and a tireless warrior, he hated fighting and only fought for
peace. In council and in war he was equally valuable. His advice was
never rejected without disaster, nor followed but with advantage; and
when the fighting once began there was not a rifle in Kentucky which
could rival his. At the nine days' siege of Boonesboro' he took
deliberate aim and killed a negro renegade who was harassing the
garrison from a tree five hundred and twenty-five feet away, and whose
head only was visible from the fort. The mildest and the quietest of
men, he had killed dozens of enemies with his own hand, and all this
without malice and, strangest of all, without incurring the hatred of
his adversaries. He had self-respect enough, but not a spark of
vanity. After the fatal battle of the Blue Licks,--where the only
point of light in the day's terrible work was the wisdom and valor
with which he had partly retrieved a disaster he foresaw but was
powerless to prevent,--when it became his duty, as senior surviving
officer of the forces, to report the affair to Governor Harrison, his
dry and naked narrative gives not a single hint of what he had done
himself, nor mentions the gallant son lying dead on the field, nor the
wounded brother whose gallantry might justly have claimed some notice.
He was thinking solely of the public good, saying, "I have encouraged
the people in this country all that I could, but I can no longer
justify them or myself to risk our lives here under such extraordinary
hazards." He therefore begged his Excellency to take immediate
measures for relief. During the short existence of Henderson's
legislature he was a member of it, and not the least useful one. Among
his measures was one for the protection of game.
[Illustration: LAND WARRANT ISSUED TO ABRAHAM LINKHORN (LINCOLN). The
original, of which this is a reduced fac-simile, is in the possession
of Colonel R. T, Durrett, Louisville, Ky.]
[Sidenote: Jefferson County Records.]
Everything we know of the emigrant Abraham Lincoln goes to show that
it was under the auspices of this most famous of our pioneers that he
set out from Rockingham County to make a home for himself and his
young family in that wild region which Boone was wresting from its
savage holders. He was not without means of his own. He took with him
funds enough to enter an amount of land which would have made his
family rich if they had retained it. The county records show him to
have been the possessor of a domain of some seventeen hundred acres.
There is still in existence [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote
relocated to chapter end.] the original warrant, dated March 4, 1780,
for four hundred acres of land, for which the pioneer had paid "into
the publick Treasury one hundred and sixty pounds current money," and
a copy of the surveyor's certificate, giving the metes and bounds of
the property on Floyd's Fork, which remained for many years in the
hands of Mordecai Lincoln, the pioneer's eldest son and heir. The name
was misspelled "Linkhorn" by a blunder of the clerk in the
land-office, and the error was perpetuated in the subsequent record.
Kentucky had been for many years the country of romance and fable for
Virginians. Twenty years before Governor Spotswood had crossed the
Alleghanies and returned to establish in a Williamsburg tavern that
fantastic order of nobility which he called the Knights of The Golden
Horseshoe, [Footnote: Their motto was _Sic jurat transcendere
montes_.] and, with a worldly wisdom which was scarcely consistent
with these medieval affectations, to press upon the attention of the
British Government the building of a line of frontier forts to guard
the Ohio River from the French. Many years after him the greatest of
all Virginians crossed the mountains again, and became heavily
interested in those schemes of emigration which filled the minds of
many of the leading men in America until they were driven out by
graver cares and more imperative duties. Washington had acquired
claims and patents to the amount of thirty or forty thousand acres of
land in the West; Benjamin Franklin and the Lees were also large
owners of these speculative titles. They formed, it is true, rather an
airy and unsubstantial sort of possession, the same ground being often
claimed by a dozen different persons or companies under various grants
from the crown or from legislatures, or through purchase by
adventurers from Indian councils. But about the time of which we are
speaking the spirit of emigration had reached the lower strata of
colonial society, and a steady stream of pioneers began pouring over
the passes of the mountains into the green and fertile valleys of
Kentucky and Tennessee. They selected their homes in the most eligible
spots to which chance or the report of earlier explorers directed
them, with little knowledge or care as to the rightful ownership of
the land, and too often cleared their corner of the wilderness for the
benefit of others. Even Boone, to whose courage, forest lore, and
singular intuitions of savage character the State of Kentucky owed
more than to any other man, was deprived in his old age of his hard-
earned homestead through his ignorance of legal forms, and removed to
Missouri to repeat in that new territory his labors and his
misfortunes.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE FROM THE FIELD BOOK OF DANIEL BOONE. This
record of the Lincoln Claim on Licking River is from the original in
posession of Lyman C. Draper, Madison, Wis.]
[Sidenote: 1780.]
The period at which Lincoln came West was one of note in the history
of Kentucky. The labors of Henderson and the Transylvania Company had
begun to bear fruit in extensive plantations and a connected system of
forts. The land laws of Kentucky had reduced to something like order
the chaos of conflicting claims arising from the various grants and
the different preemption customs under which settlers occupied their
property. The victory of Boone at Boonesboro' against the Shawnees,
and the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes by the brilliant audacity
of George Rogers Clark, had brought the region prominently to the
attention of the Atlantic States, and had turned in that direction the
restless and roving spirits which are always found in communities at
periods when great emigrations are a need of civilization. Up to this
time few persons had crossed the mountains except hunters, trappers,
and explorers--men who came merely to kill game, and possibly Indians,
or to spy out the fertility of the land for the purpose of
speculation. But in 1780 and 1781 a large number of families took up
their line of march, and in the latter year a considerable contingent
of women joined the little army of pioneers, impelled by an instinct
which they themselves probably but half comprehended. The country was
to be peopled, and there was no other way of peopling it but by the
sacrifice of many lives and fortunes; and the history of every country
shows that these are never lacking when they are wanted. The number of
those who came at about the same time with the pioneer Lincoln was
sufficient to lay the basis of a sort of social order. Early in the
year 1780 three hundred "large family boats" arrived at the Falls of
the Ohio, where the land had been surveyed by Captain Bullitt seven
years before, and in May the Legislature of Virginia passed a law for
the incorporation of the town of Louisville, then containing some six
hundred inhabitants. At the same session a law was passed confiscating
the property of certain British subjects for the endowment of an
institution of learning in Kentucky, "it being the interest of this
commonwealth," to quote the language of the philosophic Legislature,
"always to encourage and promote every design which may tend to the
improvement of the mind and the diffusion of useful knowledge even
among its remote citizens, whose situation in a barbarous neighborhood
and a savage intercourse might otherwise render them unfriendly to
science." This was the origin of the Transylvania University of
Lexington, which rose and flourished for many years on the utmost
verge of civilization.
[Illustration: SURVEYOR'S CERTIFICATE (SLIGHTLY REDUCED), TAKEN FROM
RECORD BOOK "B," PAGE 60, IN THE OFFICE OF JEFFERSON COUNTY,
KENTUCKY.]
The "barbarous neighborhood" and the "savage intercourse" undoubtedly
had their effect upon the manners and morals of the settlers; but we
should fall into error if we took it for granted that the pioneers
were all of one piece. The ruling motive which led most of them to the
wilds was that Anglo-Saxon lust of land which seems inseparable from
the race. The prospect of possessing a four-hundred-acre farm by
merely occupying it, and the privilege of exchanging a basketful of
almost worthless continental currency for an unlimited estate at the
nominal value of forty cents per acre, were irresistible to thousands
of land-loving Virginians and Carolinians whose ambition of
proprietorship was larger than their means. Accompanying this flood of
emigrants of good faith was the usual froth and scum of shiftless
idlers and adventurers, who were either drifting with a current they
were too worthless to withstand, or in pursuit of dishonest gains in
fresher and simpler regions. The vices and virtues of the pioneers
were such as proceeded from their environment. They were careless of
human life because life was worth comparatively little in that hard
struggle for existence; but they had a remarkably clear idea of the
value of property, and visited theft not only with condign punishment,
but also with the severest social proscription. Stealing a horse was
punished more swiftly and with more feeling than homicide. A man might
be replaced more easily than the other animal. Sloth was the worst of
weaknesses. An habitual drunkard was more welcome at "raisings" and
"logrollings" than a known faineant. The man who did not do a man's
share where work was to be done was christened "Lazy Lawrence," and
that was the end of him socially. Cowardice was punished by inexorable
disgrace. The point of honor was as strictly observed as it ever has
been in the idlest and most artificial society. If a man accused
another of falsehood, the ordeal by fisticuffs was instantly resorted
to. Weapons were rarely employed in these chivalrous encounters, being
kept for more serious use with Indians and wild beasts; nevertheless
fists, teeth, and the gouging thumb were often employed with fatal
effect. Yet among this rude and uncouth people there was a genuine and
remarkable respect for law. They seemed to recognize it as an absolute
necessity of their existence. In the territory of Kentucky, and
afterwards in that of Illinois, it occurred at several periods in the
transition from counties to territories and states, that the country
was without any organized authority. But the people were a law unto
themselves. Their improvised courts and councils administered law and
equity; contracts were enforced, debts were collected, and a sort of
order was maintained. It may be said, generally, that the character of
this people was far above their circumstances. In all the accessories
of life, by which we are accustomed to rate communities and races in
the scale of civilization, they were little removed from primitive
barbarism. They dressed in the skins of wild beasts killed by
themselves, and in linen stuffs woven by themselves. They hardly knew
the use of iron except in their firearms and knives. Their food
consisted almost exclusively of game, fish, and roughly ground corn-
meal. Their exchanges were made by barter; many a child grew up
without ever seeing a piece of money. Their habitations were hardly
superior to those of the savages with whom they waged constant war.
Large families lived in log huts, put together without iron, and far
more open to the inclemencies of the skies than the pig-styes of the
careful farmer of to-day. An early schoolmaster says that the first
place where he went to board was the house of one Lucas, consisting of
a single room, sixteen feet square, and tenanted by Mr. and Mrs.
Lucas, ten children, three dogs, two cats, and himself. There were
many who lived in hovels so cold that they had to sleep on their shoes
to keep them from freezing too stiff to be put on. The children grew
inured to misery like this, and played barefoot in the snow. It is an
error to suppose that all this could be undergone with impunity. They
suffered terribly from malarial and rheumatic complaints, and the
instances of vigorous and painless age were rare among them. The lack
of moral and mental sustenance was still more marked. They were
inclined to be a religious people, but a sermon was an unusual luxury,
only to be enjoyed at long intervals and by great expense of time.
There were few books or none, and there was little opportunity for the
exchange of opinion. Any variation in the dreary course of events was
welcome. A murder was not without its advantages as a stimulus to
conversation; a criminal trial was a kind of holiday to a county. It
was this poverty of life, this famine of social gratification, from
which sprang their fondness for the grosser forms of excitement, and
their tendency to rough and brutal practical joking. In a life like
theirs a laugh seemed worth having at any expense.
[Illustration: HOUSE NEAR BEECHLAND, KENTUCKY, IN WHICH THOMAS LINCOLN
AND NANCY HANKS WERE MARRIED.]
But near as they were to barbarism in all the circumstances of their
daily existence, they were far from it politically. They were the
children of a race which had been trained in government for centuries
in the best school the world has ever seen, and wherever they went
they formed the town, the county, the court, and the legislative power
with the ease and certainty of nature evolving its results. And this
they accomplished in the face of a savage foe surrounding their feeble
settlements, always alert and hostile, invisible and dreadful as the
visionary powers of the air. Until the treaty of Greenville, in 1795,
closed the long and sanguinary history of the old Indian wars, there
was no day in which the pioneer could leave his cabin with the
certainty of not finding it in ashes when he returned, and his little
flock murdered on his threshold, or carried into a captivity worse
than death. Whenever nightfall came with the man of the house away
from home, the anxiety and care of the women and children were none
the less bitter because so common.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING VARIOUS LOCALITIES CONNECTED WITH EARLY
EVENTS IN THE LINCOLN FAMILY.]
The life of the pioneer Abraham Lincoln soon came to a disastrous
close. He had settled in Jefferson County, on the land he had bought
from the Government, and cleared a small farm in the forest.
[Footnote: Lyman C. Draper, of the Wisconsin Historical Society, has
kindly furnished us with a MS account of a Kentucky tradition
according to which the pioneer Abraham Lincoln was captured by the
Indians, near Crow's Station, in August, 1782, carried into captivity,
and forced to run the gauntlet. The story rests on the statement of a
single person, Mrs. Sarah Graham.] One morning in the year 1784, he
started with his three sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, to the edge
of the clearing, and began the day's work. A shot from the brush
killed the father; Mordecai, the eldest son, ran instinctively to the
house, Josiah to the neighboring fort, for assistance, and Thomas, the
youngest, a child of six, was left with the corpse of his father.
Mordecai, reaching the cabin, seized the rifle, and saw through the
loophole an Indian in his war-paint stooping to raise the child from
the ground. He took deliberate aim at a white ornament on the breast
of the savage and brought him down. The little boy, thus released, ran
to the cabin, and Mordecai, from the loft, renewed his fire upon the
savages, who began to show themselves from the thicket, until Josiah
returned with assistance from the stockade, and the assailants fled.
This tragedy made an indelible impression on the mind of Mordecai.
Either a spirit of revenge for his murdered father, or a sportsmanlike
pleasure in his successful shot, made him a determined Indian-stalker,
and he rarely stopped to inquire whether the red man who came within
range of his rifle was friendly or hostile. [Footnote: Late in life
Mordecai Lincoln removed to Hancock County, Illinois, where his
descendants still live.]
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF THE MARRIAGE BOND OF THOMAS LINCOLN.]
The head of the family being gone, the widow Lincoln soon removed to a
more thickly settled neighborhood in Washington County. There her
children grew up. Mordecai and Josiah became reputable citizens; the
two daughters married two men named Crume and Brumfield. Thomas, to
whom were reserved the honors of an illustrious paternity, learned the
trade of a carpenter. He was an easy-going man, entirely without
ambition, but not without self-respect. Though the friendliest and
most jovial of gossips, he was not insensible to affronts; and when
his slow anger was roused he was a formidable adversary. Several
border bullies, at different times, crowded him indiscreetly, and were
promptly and thoroughly whipped. He was strong, well-knit, and sinewy;
but little over the medium height, though in other respects he seems
to have resembled his son in appearance.
On the 12th of June, 1806, [Footnote: All previous accounts give the
date of this marriage as September 23d. This error arose from a
clerical blunder in the county record of marriages. The minister, the
Rev. Jesse Head, in making his report, wrote the date before the
names; the clerk, copying it, lost the proper sequence of the entries,
and gave to the Lincolns the date belonging to the next couple on the
list.] while learning his trade in the carpenter shop of Joseph Hanks,
in Elizabethtown, he married Nancy Hanks, a niece of his employer,
near Beechland, in Washington County. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy
footnote (1) relocated to chapter end.] She was one of a large family
who had emigrated from Virginia with the Lincolns and with another
family called Sparrow. They had endured together the trials of pioneer
life; their close relations continued for many years after, and were
cemented by frequent intermarriage.
Mrs. Lincoln's mother was named Lucy Hanks; her sisters were Betty,
Polly, and Nancy who married Thomas Sparrow, Jesse Friend, and Levi
Hall. The childhood of Nancy was passed with the Sparrows, and she was
oftener called by their name than by her own. The whole family
connection was composed of people so little given to letters that it
is hard to determine the proper names and relationships of the younger
members amid the tangle of traditional cousinships. [Footnote: The
Hanks family seem to have gone from Pennsylvania and thence to
Kentucky about the same time with the Lincolns. They also belonged to
the Communion of Friends.--"Historical Collections of Gwynnedd," by H.
M. Jenkins.] Those who went to Indiana with Thomas Lincoln, and grew
up with his children, are the only ones that need demand our
attention.
There was no hint of future glory in the wedding or the bringing home
of Nancy Lincoln. All accounts represent her as a handsome young woman
of twenty-three, of appearance and intellect superior to her lowly
fortunes. She could read and write,--a remarkable accomplishment in
her circle,--and even taught her husband to form the letters of his
name. He had no such valuable wedding gift to bestow upon her; he
brought her to a little house in Elizabethtown, where he and she and
want dwelt together in fourteen feet square. The next year a daughter
was born to them; and the next the young carpenter, not finding his
work remunerative enough for his growing needs, removed to a little
farm which he had bought on the easy terms then prevalent in Kentucky.
It was on the Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in what was then Hardin
and is now La Rue County, three miles from Hodgensville. The ground
had nothing attractive about it but its cheapness. It was hardly more
grateful than the rocky hill slopes of New England. It required full
as earnest and intelligent industry to persuade a living out of those
barren hillocks and weedy hollows, covered with stunted and scrubby
underbrush, as it would amid the rocks and sands of the northern
coast.
Thomas Lincoln settled down in this dismal solitude to a deeper
poverty than any of his name had ever known; and there, in the midst
of the most unpromising circumstances that ever witnessed the advent
of a hero into this world, Abraham Lincoln was born on the 12th day of
February, 1809.
Four years later, Thomas Lincoln purchased a fine farm of 238 acres on
Knob Creek, near where it flows into the Rolling Fork, and succeeded
in getting a portion of it into cultivation. The title, however,
remained in him only a little while, and after his property had passed
out of his control he looked about for another place to establish
himself.
[Illustration: This Certificate, or Marriage List (here shown in
reduced fac-simile), written by the Rev. Jesse Head, was lost sight of
for many years, and about 1886 was discovered through the efforts of
W. F. Booker, Clerk of Washington County, Kentucky.]
Of all these years of Abraham Lincoln's early childhood we know almost
nothing. He lived a solitary life in the woods, returning from his
lonesome little games to his cheerless home. He never talked of these
days to his most intimate friends. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy
footnote (2) relocated to chapter end.] Once, when asked what he
remembered about the war with Great Britain, he replied: "Nothing but
this. I had been fishing one day and caught a little fish which I was
taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and, having been always told
at home that we must be good to the soldiers, I gave him my fish."
This is only a faint glimpse, but what it shows is rather
pleasant--the generous child and the patriotic household. But there is
no question that these first years of his life had their lasting
effect upon the temperament of this great mirthful and melancholy man.
He had little schooling. He accompanied his sister Sarah [Footnote:
This daughter of Thomas Lincoln is sometimes called Nancy and
sometimes Sarah. She seems to have borne the former name during her
mother's life-time, and to have taken her stepmother's name after Mr.
Lincoln's second marriage.] to the only schools that existed in their
neighborhood, one kept by Zachariah Riney, another by Caleb Hazel,
where he learned his alphabet and a little more. But of all those
advantages for the cultivation of a young mind and spirit which every
home now offers to its children, the books, toys, ingenious games, and
daily devotion of parental love, he knew absolutely nothing.
[Relocated Footnote: Soon after Mr. Lincoln arrived in Washington in
1861, he received the following letter from one of his Virginia
kinsmen, the last communication which ever came from them. It was
written on paper adorned with a portrait of Jefferson Davis, and was
inclosed in an envelope emblazoned with the Confederate flag:
"To ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Esq., _President of the Northern Confederacy_.
"SIR: Having just returned from a trip through Virginia, North
Carolina, and Tennessee, permit me to inform you that you will get
whipped out of your boots. To-day I met a gentleman from Anna,
Illinois, and although he voted for you he says that the moment your
troops leave Cairo they will get the spots knocked out of them. My
dear sir, these are facts which time will prove to be correct.
"I am, sir, with every consideration, yours respectfully,
"MINOR LINCOLN,
"Of the Staunton stock of Lincolns."
There was a young Abraham Lincoln on the Confederate side in the
Shenandoah distinguished for his courage and ferocity. He lay in wait
and shot a Drunkard preacher, whom he suspected of furnishing
information to the Union army. (Letter from Samuel W. Pennypacker.)]
[Relocated Footnote: In giving to the wife of the pioneer Lincoln the
name of Mary Shipley we follow the tradition in his family. The Hon.
J. L. Nall, of Missouri, grandson of Nancy (Lincoln) Brumfield,
Abraham Lincoln's youngest child, has given us so clear a statement of
the case that we cannot hesitate to accept it, although it conflicts
with equally positive statements from other sources. The late Gideon
Welles, Secretary of the Navy, who gave much intelligent effort to
genealogical researches, was convinced that the Abraham Lincoln who
married Miss Hannah Winters, a daughter of Ann Boone, sister of the
famous Daniel, was the President's grandfather. Waddell's "Annals of
Augusta County" says he married Elizabeth Winter, a cousin of Daniel
Boone. The Boone and Lincoln families were large and there were
frequent intermarriages among them, and the patriarchal name of
Abraham was a favorite one. There was still another Lincoln, Hannaniah
by name, who was also intimately associated with the Boones. His
signature appears on the surveyor's certificate for Abraham Lincoln's
land in Jefferson County, and he joined Daniel Boone in 1798 in the
purchase of the tract of land on the Missouri River where Boone died.
(Letter from Richard V. B. Lincoln, printed in the "Williamsport
[Pa.] Banner," Feb. 25, 1881.)]
[Relocated Footnote: In the possession of Colonel Reuben T. Durrett,
of Louisville, a gentleman who has made the early history of his State
a subject of careful study, and to whom we are greatly indebted for
information in regard to the settlement of the Lincolns in Kentucky.
He gives the following list of lands in that State owned by Abraham
Lincoln:
1. Four hundred acres on Long Run, a branch of Floyd's Fork, in
Jefferson County, entered May 29, 1780, and surveyed May 7, 1785. We
have in our possession the original patent issued by Governor Garrard,
of Kentucky, to Abraham Lincoln for this property. It was found by
Col. A. C. Matthews, of the 99th Illinois, in 1863, at an abandoned
residence near Indianola, Texas.
2. Eight hundred acres on Green River, near Green River Lick, entered
June 7, 1780, and surveyed October 12, 1784.
3. Five hundred acres in Campbell County, date of entry not known, but
surveyed September 27, 1798, and patented June 30, 1799--the survey
and patent evidently following his entry after his death. It is
possible that this was the five-hundred-acre tract found in Boone's
field-book, in the possession of Lyman C. Draper, Esq., Secretary of
the Wisconsin Historical Society, and erroneously supposed by some to
have been in Mercer County. Boone was a deputy of Colonel Thomas
Marshall, Surveyor of Fayette County.]
[Relocated Footnote (1): The following is a copy of the marriage bond:
"Know all men by these presents, that we, Thomas Lincoln and Richard
Berry, are held and firmly bound unto his Excellency, the Governor of
Kentucky, in the just and full sum of fifty pounds current money to the
payment of which well and truly to be made to the said Governor and his
successors, we bind ourselves, our heirs, etc., jointly and severally,
firmly by these presents, sealed with our seals and dated this 10th day
of June, 1806. The condition of the above obligation is such that
whereas there is a marriage shortly intended between the above bound
Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, for which a license has issued, now if
there be no lawful cause to obstruct the said marriage, then this
obligation to be void, else to remain in full force and virtue in law.
"THOMAS LINCOLN [Seal].
"RICHARD BERRY [Seal].
"_Witness_, JOHN H. PARROTT, Guardian."
Richard Berry was a connection of Lincoln; his wife was a Shipley.]
[Relocated Footnote (2): There is still living (1886) near Knob Creek
in Kentucky, at the age of eighty, a man who claims to have known
Abraham Lincoln in his childhood--Austin Gollaher. He says he used to
play with Abe Lincoln in the shavings of his father's carpenter shop.
He tells a story which, if accurate, entitles him to the civic crown
which the Romans used to give to one who saved the life of a citizen.
When Gollaher was eleven and Lincoln eight the two boys were in the
woods in pursuit of partridges; in trying to "coon" across Knob Creek
on a log, Lincoln fell in and Gollaher fished him out with a sycamore
branch--a service to the Republic, the value of which it would be
difficult to compute.]