INDIANA
[Sidenote: 1818.]
By the time the boy Abraham had attained his seventh year, the social
condition of Kentucky had changed considerably from the early pioneer
days. Life had assumed a more settled and orderly course. The old
barbarous equality of the earlier time was gone; a difference of
classes began to be seen. Those who held slaves assumed a distinct
social superiority over those who did not. Thomas Lincoln, concluding
that Kentucky was no country for a poor man, determined to seek his
fortune in Indiana. He had heard of rich and unoccupied lands in Perry
County in that State, and thither he determined to go. He built a rude
raft, loaded it with his kit of tools and four hundred gallons of
whisky, and trusted his fortunes to the winding water-courses. He met
with only one accident on his way: his raft capsized in the Ohio
River, but he fished up his kit of tools and most of the ardent
spirits, and arrived safely at the place of a settler named Posey,
with whom he left his odd invoice of household goods for the
wilderness, while he started on foot to look for a home in the dense
forest. He selected a spot which pleased him in his first day's
journey. He then walked back to Knob Creek and brought his family on
to their new home. No humbler cavalcade ever invaded the Indiana
timber. Besides his wife and two children, his earthly possessions
were of the slightest, for the backs of two borrowed horses sufficed
for the load. Insufficient bedding and clothing, a few pans and
kettles, were their sole movable wealth. They relied on Lincoln's kit
of tools for their furniture, and on his rifle for their food. At
Posey's they hired a wagon and literally hewed a path through the
wilderness to their new habitation near Little Pigeon Creek, a mile
and a half east of Gentryville, in a rich and fertile forest country.
Thomas Lincoln, with the assistance of his wife and children, built a
temporary shelter of the sort called in the frontier language "a half-
faced camp"; merely a shed of poles, which defended the inmates on
three sides from foul weather, but left them open to its inclemency in
front. For a whole year his family lived in this wretched fold, while
he was clearing a little patch of ground for planting corn, and
building a rough cabin for a permanent residence. They moved into the
latter before it was half completed; for by this time the Sparrows had
followed the Lincolns from Kentucky, and the half-faced camp was given
up to them. But the rude cabin seemed so spacious and comfortable
after the squalor of "the camp," that Thomas Lincoln did no further
work on it for a long time. He left it for a year or two without
doors, or windows, or floor. The battle for existence allowed him no
time for such superfluities. He raised enough corn to support life;
the dense forest around him abounded in every form of feathered game;
a little way from his cabin an open glade was full of deer-licks, and
an hour or two of idle waiting was generally rewarded by a shot at a
fine deer, which would furnish meat for a week, and material for
breeches and shoes. His cabin was like that of other pioneers. A few
three-legged stools; a bedstead made of poles stuck between the logs
in the angle of the cabin, the outside corner supported by a crotched
stick driven into the ground; the table, a huge hewed log standing on
four legs; a pot, kettle, and skillet, and a few tin and pewter dishes
were all the furniture. The boy Abraham climbed at night to his bed of
leaves in the loft, by a ladder of wooden pins driven into the logs.
This life has been vaunted by poets and romancers as a happy and
healthful one. Even Dennis Hanks, speaking of his youthful days when
his only home was the half-faced camp, says, "I tell you, Billy, I
enjoyed myself better then than I ever have since." But we may
distrust the reminiscences of old settlers, who see their youth in the
flattering light of distance. The life was neither enjoyable nor
wholesome. The rank woods were full of malaria, and singular epidemics
from time to time ravaged the settlements. In the autumn of 1818 the
little community of Pigeon Creek was almost exterminated by a
frightful pestilence called the milk-sickness, or, in the dialect of
the country, "the milk-sick." It is a mysterious disease which has
been the theme of endless wrangling among Western physicians, and the
difficulty of ascertaining anything about it has been greatly
increased by the local sensitiveness which forbids any one to admit
that any well-defined case has ever been seen in his neighborhood,
"although just over the creek (or in the next county) they have had it
bad." It seems to have been a malignant form of fever--attributed
variously to malaria and to the eating of poisonous herbs by the
cattle--attacking cattle as well as human beings, attended with
violent retching and a burning sensation in the stomach, often
terminating fatally on the third day. In many cases those who
apparently recovered lingered for years with health seriously
impaired. Among the Pioneers of Pigeon Creek, so ill-fed, ill-housed,
and uncared for, there was little prospect of recovery from such a
grave disorder. The Sparrows, husband and wife, died early in October,
and Nancy Hanks Lincoln followed them after an interval of a few days.
Thomas Lincoln made the coffins for his dead "out of green lumber cut
with a whipsaw," and they were all buried, with scant ceremony, in a
little clearing of the forest. It is related of young Abraham, that he
sorrowed most of all that his mother should have been laid away with
such maimed rites, and that he contrived several months later to have
a wandering preacher named David Elkin brought to the settlement, to
deliver a funeral sermon over her grave, already white with the early
winter snows. [Footnote: A stone has been placed over the site of the
grave "by P. E. Studebaker, of South Bend, Indiana." The stone bears
the following inscription: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of President
Lincoln, died October 5th, A. D. 1818, aged 35 years. Erected by a
friend of her martyred son, 1879."]
This was the dreariest winter of his life, for before the next
December came his father had brought from Kentucky a new wife, who was
to change the lot of all the desolate little family very much for the
better. Sarah Bush had been an acquaintance of Thomas Lincoln before
his first marriage; she had, it is said, rejected him to marry one
Johnston, the jailer at Elizabethtown, who had died, leaving her with
three children, a boy and two girls. When Lincoln's widowhood had
lasted a year, he went down to Elizabethtown to begin again the wooing
broken off so many years before. He wasted no time in preliminaries,
but promptly made his wishes known, and the next morning they were
married. It was growing late in the autumn, and the pioneer probably
dreaded another lonely winter on Pigeon Creek. Mrs. Johnston was not
altogether portionless. She had a store of household goods which
filled a four-horse wagon borrowed of Ralph Grume, Thomas Lincoln's
brother-in-law, to transport the bride to Indiana. It took little time
for this energetic and honest Christian woman to make her influence
felt, even in those discouraging surroundings, and Thomas Lincoln and
the children were the better for her coming all the rest of their
lives. The lack of doors and floors was at once corrected. Her honest
pride inspired her husband to greater thrift and industry. The goods
she brought with her compelled some effort at harmony in the other
fittings of the house. She dressed the children in warmer clothing and
put them to sleep in comfortable beds. With this slight addition to
their resources the family were much improved in appearance, behavior,
and self-respect.
[Illustration: SARAH BUSH LINCOLN AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-SIX.]
Thomas Lincoln joined the Baptist church at Little Pigeon in 1823; his
oldest child, Sarah, followed his example three years later. They were
known as active and consistent members of that communion. Lincoln was
himself a good carpenter when he chose to work at his trade; a walnut
table made by him is still preserved as part of the furniture of the
church to which he belonged.
[Sidenote: MS. letter from the Rev. T.V. Robertson, pastor of the
Little Pigeon Baptist church.]
Such a woman as Sarah Bush could not be careless of so important a
matter as the education of her children, and they made the best use of
the scanty opportunities the neighborhood afforded. "It was a wild
region," writes Mr. Lincoln, in one of those rare bits of
autobiography which he left behind him, "with many bears and other
wild animals still in the woods. There were some schools so-called,
but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin',
writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three.' If a straggler supposed
to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was
looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite
ambition for education." But in the case of this ungainly boy there
was no necessity of any external incentive. A thirst for knowledge as
a means of rising in the world was innate in him. It had nothing to do
with that love of science for its own sake which has been so often
seen in lowly savants, who have sacrificed their lives to the pure
desire of knowing the works of God. All the little learning he ever
acquired he seized as a tool to better his condition. He learned his
letters that he might read books and see how men in the great world
outside of his woods had borne themselves in the fight for which he
longed. He learned to write, first, that he might have an
accomplishment his playmates had not; then that he might help his
elders by writing their letters, and enjoy the feeling of usefulness
which this gave him; and finally that he might copy what struck him in
his reading and thus make it his own for future use. He learned to
cipher certainly from no love of mathematics, but because it might
come in play in some more congenial business than the farm-work which
bounded the horizon of his contemporaries. Had it not been for that
interior spur which kept his clear spirit at its task, his schools
could have done little for him; for, counting his attendance under
Riney and Hazel in Kentucky, and under Dorsey, Crawford, and Swaney in
Indiana, it amounted to less than a year in all. The schools were much
alike. They were held in deserted cabins of round logs, with earthen
floors, and small holes for windows, sometimes illuminated by as much
light as could penetrate through panes of paper greased with lard. The
teachers were usually in keeping with their primitive surroundings.
The profession offered no rewards sufficient to attract men of
education or capacity. After a few months of desultory instruction
young Abraham knew all that these vagrant literati could teach him.
His last school-days were passed with one Swaney in 1826, who taught
at a distance of four and a half miles from the Lincoln cabin. The
nine miles of walking doubtless seemed to Thomas Lincoln a waste of
time, and the lad was put at steady work and saw no more of school.
But it is questionable whether he lost anything by being deprived of
the ministrations of the backwoods dominies. When his tasks ended, his
studies became the chief pleasure of his life. In all the intervals of
his work--in which he never took delight, knowing well enough that he
was born for something better than that--he read, wrote, and ciphered
incessantly. His reading was naturally limited by his opportunities,
for books were among the rarest of luxuries in that region and time.
But he read everything he could lay his hands upon, and he was
certainly fortunate in the few books of which he became the possessor.
It would hardly be possible to select a better handful of classics for
a youth in his circumstances than the few volumes he turned with a
nightly and daily hand--the Bible, "Aesop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe,"
"The Pilgrim's Progress," a history of the United States, and Weem's
"Life of Washington." These were the best, and these he read over and
over till he knew them almost by heart. But his voracity for anything
printed was insatiable. He would sit in the twilight and read a
dictionary as long as he could see. He used to go to David Turnham's,
the town constable, and devour the "Revised Statutes of Indiana," as
boys in our day do the "Three Guardsmen." Of the books he did not own
he took voluminous notes, filling his copy-book with choice extracts,
and poring over them until they were fixed in his memory. He could not
afford to waste paper upon his original compositions. He would sit by
the fire at night and cover the wooden shovel with essays and
arithmetical exercises, which he would shave off and then begin again.
It is touching to think of this great-spirited child, battling year
after year against his evil star, wasting his ingenuity upon devices
and makeshifts, his high intelligence starving for want of the simple
appliances of education that are now offered gratis to the poorest and
most indifferent. He did a man's work from the time he left school;
his strength and stature were already far beyond those of ordinary
men. He wrought his appointed tasks ungrudgingly, though without
enthusiasm; but when his employer's day was over, his own began. John
Hanks says: "When Abe and I returned to the house from work he would
go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread, take down a book,
sit down, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read." The picture
may be lacking in grace, but its truthfulness is beyond question. The
habit remained with him always. Some of his greatest work in later
years was done in this grotesque Western fashion,--"sitting on his
shoulder-blades."
[Sidenote: W. H. Lamou "Life of Lincoln," p. 37.]
[Sidenote: Damon, p. 80.]
Otherwise his life at this time differed little from that of ordinary
farm-hands. His great strength and intelligence made him a valuable
laborer, and his unfailing good temper and flow of rude rustic wit
rendered him the most agreeable of comrades. He was always ready with
some kindly act or word for others. Once he saved the life of the town
drunkard, whom he found freezing by the roadside, by carrying him in
his strong arms to the tavern, and working over him until he revived.
It is a curious fact that this act of common humanity was regarded as
something remarkable in the neighborhood; the grateful sot himself
always said "it was mighty clever of Abe to tote me so far that cold
night." It was also considered an eccentricity that he hated and
preached against cruelty to animals. Some of his comrades remember
still his bursts of righteous wrath, when a boy, against the wanton
murder of turtles and other creatures. He was evidently of better and
finer clay than his fellows, even in those wild and ignorant days. At
home he was the life of the singularly assorted household, which
consisted, besides his parents and himself, of his own sister, Mrs.
Lincoln's two girls and boy, Dennis Hanks, the legacy of the dying
Sparrow family, and John Hanks (son of the carpenter Joseph with whom
Thomas Lincoln learned his trade), who came from Kentucky several
years after the others. It was probably as much the inexhaustible good
nature and kindly helpfulness of young Abraham which kept the peace
among all these heterogeneous elements, effervescing with youth and
confined in a one-roomed cabin, as it was the Christian sweetness and
firmness of the woman of the house. It was a happy and united
household: brothers and sisters and cousins living peacefully under
the gentle rule of the good stepmother, but all acknowledging from a
very early period the supremacy in goodness and cleverness of their
big brother Abraham. Mrs. Lincoln, not long before her death, gave
striking testimony of his winning and loyal character. She said to Mr.
Herndon: "I can say, what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say,
Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused in fact or
appearance to do anything I asked him. His mind and mine--what little
I had--seemed to run together.... I had a son John, who was raised
with Abe. Both were good boys, but I must say, both now being dead,
that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see." Such were the
beginnings of this remarkable career, sacred as we see from childhood,
to duty and to human kindliness.
"We are making no claim of early saintship for him. He was merely a
good boy, with sufficient wickedness to prove his humanity. One of his
employers, undazzled by recent history, faithfully remembers that
young Abe liked his dinner and his pay better than his work: there is
surely nothing alien to ordinary mortality in this. It is also
reported that he sometimes impeded the celerity of harvest operations
by making burlesque speeches, or worse than that, comic sermons, from
the top of some tempting stump, to the delight of the hired hands and
the exasperation of the farmer. His budding talents as a writer were
not always used discreetly. He was too much given to scribbling coarse
satires and chronicles, in prose, and in something which had to him
and his friends the air of verse. From this arose occasional heart-
burnings and feuds, in which Abraham bore his part according to the
custom of the country. Despite his Quaker ancestry and his natural
love of peace, he was no non-resistant, and when he once entered upon
a quarrel the opponent usually had the worst of it. But he was
generous and placable, and some of his best friends were those with
whom he had had differences, and had settled them in the way then
prevalent,--in a ring of serious spectators, calmly and judicially
ruminant, under the shade of some spreading oak, at the edge of the
timber. Before we close our sketch of this period of Lincoln's life,
it may not be amiss to glance for a moment at the state of society
among the people with whom his lot was cast in these important years.
In most respects there had been little moral or material improvement
since the early settlement of the country. Their houses were usually
of one room, built of round logs with the bark on. We have known a man
to gain the sobriquet of "Split-log Mitchell" by indulging in the
luxury of building a cabin of square-hewn timbers. Their dress was
still mostly of tanned deer-hide, a material to the last degree
uncomfortable when the wearer was caught in a shower. Their shoes were
of the same, and a good Western authority calls a wet moccasin "a
decent way of going barefoot." About the time, however, when Lincoln
grew to manhood, garments of wool and of tow began to be worn, dyed
with the juice of the butternut or white walnut, and the hides of
neat-cattle began to be tanned. But for a good while it was only the
women who indulged in these novelties. There was little public
worship. Occasionally an itinerant preacher visited a county, and the
settlers for miles around would go nearly in mass to the meeting. If a
man was possessed of a wagon, the family rode luxuriously; but as a
rule the men walked and the women went on horseback with the little
children in their arms. It was considered no violation of the
sanctities of the occasion to carry a rifle and take advantage of any
game which might be stirring during the long walk. Arriving at the
place of meeting, which was some log cabin if the weather was foul, or
the shade of a tree if it was fair, the assembled worshipers threw
their provisions into a common store and picnicked in neighborly
companionship. The preacher would then take off his coat, and go at
his work with an energy unknown to our days.
There were few other social meetings. Men came together for
"raisings," where a house was built in a day; for "log-rollings,"
where tons of excellent timber were piled together and wastefully
burned; for wolf-hunts, where a tall pole was erected in the midst of
a prairie or clearing, and a great circle of hunters formed around it,
sometimes of miles in diameter, which, gradually contracting with
shouts and yells, drove all the game in the woods together at the pole
for slaughter; and for horse-races, which bore little resemblance to
those magnificent exhibitions which are the boast of Kentucky at this
time. In these affairs the women naturally took no part; but weddings,
which were entertainments scarcely less rude and boisterous, were
their own peculiar province. These festivities lasted rarely less than
twenty-four hours. The guests assembled in the morning. There was a
race for the whisky bottle; a midday dinner; an afternoon of rough
games and outrageous practical jokes; a supper and dance at night,
interrupted by the successive withdrawals of the bride and of the
groom, attended with ceremonies and jests of more than Rabelaisian
crudeness; and a noisy dispersal next day.
[Sidenote: O. H. Smith, "Early Indiana Trials," p. 285.]
The one point at which they instinctively clung to civilization was
their regard for law and reverence for courts of justice. Yet these
were of the simplest character and totally devoid of any adventitious
accessories. An early jurist of the country writes: "I was Circuit
Prosecuting Attorney at the time of the trials at the falls of Fall
Creek, where Pendleton now stands. Four of the prisoners were
convicted of murder, and three of them hung, for killing Indians. The
court was held in a double log cabin, the grand jury sat upon a log in
the woods, and the foreman signed the bills of indictment, which I had
prepared, upon his knee; there was not a petit juror that had shoes
on; all wore moccasins, and were belted around the waist, and carried
side-knives used by the hunters." Yet amidst all this apparent
savagery we see justice was done, and the law vindicated even against
the bitterest prejudices of these pioneer jurymen.
[Sidenote: Lamon, p. 44.]
They were full of strange superstitions. The belief in witchcraft had
long ago passed away with the smoke of the fagots from old and New
England, but it survived far into this century in Kentucky and the
lower halves of Indiana and Illinois--touched with a peculiar tinge of
African magic. The pioneers believed in it for good and evil. Their
veterinary practice was mostly by charms and incantations; and when a
person believed himself bewitched, a shot at the image of the witch
with a bullet melted out of a half-dollar was the favorite curative
agency. Luck was an active divinity in their apprehension, powerful
for blessing or bane, announced by homely signs, to be placated by
quaint ceremonies. A dog crossing the hunter's path spoiled his day,
unless he instantly hooked his little fingers together, and pulled
till the animal disappeared. They were familiar with the ever-
recurring mystification of the witch-hazel, or divining-rod; and the
"cure by faith" was as well known to them as it has since become in a
more sophisticated state of society. The commonest occurrences were
heralds of death and doom. A bird lighting in a window, a dog baying
at certain hours, the cough of a horse in the direction of a child,
the sight, or worse still, the touch of a dead snake, heralded
domestic woe. A wagon driving past the house with a load of baskets
was a warning of atmospheric disturbance. A vague and ignorant
astronomy governed their plantings and sowings, the breeding of their
cattle, and all farm-work. They must fell trees for fence-rails before
noon, and in the waxing of the moon. Fences built when there was no
moon would give way; but that was the proper season for planting
potatoes and other vegetables whose fruit grows underground; those
which bore their product in the air must be planted when the moon
shone. The magical power of the moon was wide in its influence; it
extended to the most minute details of life.
[Sidenote: Lamon, p. 52.]
Among these people, and in all essential respects one of them, Abraham
Lincoln passed his childhood and youth. He was not remarkably
precocious. His mind was slow in acquisition, and his powers of
reasoning and rhetoric improved constantly to the end of his life, at
a rate of progress marvelously regular and sustained. But there was
that about him, even at the age of nineteen years, which might well
justify his admiring friends in presaging for him an unusual career.
He had read every book he could find, and could "spell down" the whole
county at their orthographical contests. By dint of constant practice
he had acquired an admirably clear and serviceable handwriting. He
occasionally astounded his companions by such glimpses of occult
science as that the world is round and that the sun is relatively
stationary. He wrote, for his own amusement and edification, essays on
politics, of which gentlemen of standing who had been favored with a
perusal said with authority, at the cross-roads grocery, "The world
can't beat it." One or two of these compositions got into print and
vastly increased the author's local fame. He was also a magnanimous
boy, with a larger and kindlier spirit than common. His generosity,
courage, and capability of discerning two sides to a dispute, were
remarkable even then, and won him the admiration of those to whom such
qualities were unknown. But perhaps, after all, the thing which gained
and fixed his mastery over his fellows was to a great degree his
gigantic stature and strength. He attained his full growth, six feet
and four inches, two years before he came of age. He rarely met with a
man he could not easily handle. His strength is still a tradition in
Spencer County. One aged man says that he has seen him pick up and
carry away a chicken-house weighing six hundred pounds. At another
time, seeing some men preparing a contrivance for lifting some large
posts, Abe quickly shouldered the posts and took them where they were
needed. One of his employers says, "He could sink an axe deeper into
wood than any man I ever saw." With strength like this and a brain to
direct it, a man was a born leader in that country and at that time.
There are, of course, foolish stories extant that Abraham used to
boast, and that others used to predict, that he would be President
some day. The same thing is daily said of thousands of boys who will
never be constables. But there is evidence that he felt too large for
the life of a farmhand on Pigeon Creek, and his thoughts naturally
turned, after the manner of restless boys in the West, to the river,
as the avenue of escape from the narrow life of the woods. He once
asked an old friend to give him a recommendation to some steamboat on
the Ohio, but desisted from his purpose on being reminded that his
father had the right to dispose of his time for a year or so more. But
in 1828 an opportunity offered for a little glimpse of the world
outside, and the boy gladly embraced it. He was hired by Mr. Gentry,
the proprietor of the neighboring village of Gentryville, to accompany
his son with a flat-boat of produce to New Orleans and intermediate
landings. The voyage was made successfully, and Abraham gained great
credit for his management and sale of the cargo. The only important
incident of the trip occurred at the plantation of Madame Duchesne, a
few miles below Baton Rouge. The young merchants had tied up for the
night and were asleep in the cabin, when they were aroused by
shuffling footsteps, which proved to be a gang of marauding negroes,
coming to rob the boat. Abraham instantly attacked them with a club,
knocked several overboard and put the rest to flight; flushed with
battle, he and Allen Gentry carried the war into the enemy's country,
and pursued the retreating Africans some distance in the darkness.
They then returned to the boat, bleeding but victorious, and hastily
swung into the stream and floated down the river till daylight.
Lincoln's exertion in later years for the welfare of the African race
showed that this nocturnal battle had not led him to any hasty and
hostile generalizations.
The next autumn, John Hanks, the steadiest and most trustworthy of his
family, went to Illinois. Though an illiterate and rather dull man, he
had a good deal of solidity of character and consequently some
influence and consideration in the household. He settled in Macon
County, and was so well pleased with the country, and especially with
its admirable distribution into prairie and timber, that he sent
repeated messages to his friends in Indiana to come out and join him.
Thomas Lincoln was always ready to move. He had probably by this time
despaired of ever owning any unencumbered real estate in Indiana, and
the younger members of the family had little to bind them to the place
where they saw nothing in the future but hard work and poor living.
Thomas Lincoln handed over his farm to Mr. Gentry, sold his crop of
corn and hogs, packed his household goods and those of his children
and sons-in-law into a single wagon, drawn by two yoke of oxen, the
combined wealth of himself and Dennis Hanks, and started for the new
State. His daughter Sarah or Nancy, for she was called by both names,
who married Aaron Grigsby a few years before, had died in childbirth.
The emigrating family consisted of the Lincolns, John Johnston, Mrs.
Lincoln's son, and her daughters, Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Hanks, with their
husbands.
Two weeks of weary tramping over forest roads and muddy prairie, and
the dangerous fording of streams swollen by the February thaws,
brought the party to John Hanks's place near Decatur. He met them with
a frank and energetic welcome. He had already selected a piece of
ground for them a few miles from his own, and had the logs ready for
their house. They numbered men enough to build without calling in
their neighbors, and immediately put up a cabin on the north fork of
the Sangamon River. The family thus housed and sheltered, one more bit
of filial work remained for Abraham before assuming his virile
independence. With the assistance of John Hanks he plowed fifteen
acres, and split, from the tall walnut-trees of the primeval forest,
enough rails to surround them with a fence. Little did either dream,
while engaged in this work, that the day would come when the
appearance of John Hanks in a public meeting, with two of these rails
on his shoulder, would electrify a State convention, and kindle
throughout the country a contagious and passionate enthusiasm, whose
results would reach to endless generations.