Sarah, the sister of Abraham Lincoln, though in some respects like her
brother, lacked his stature. She was thick-set, had dark-brown hair,
deep-gray eyes, and an even disposition. In contact with others she
was kind and considerate. Her nature was one of amiability, and God had
endowed her with that invincible combination--modesty and good sense.
Strange to say, Mr. Lincoln never said much about his sister in after
years, and we are really indebted to the Hankses--Dennis and John--for
the little we have learned about this rather unfortunate young woman.
She was married to Aaron Grigsby, in Spencer county, Indiana, in
the month of August, 1826, and died January 20, 1828. Her brother
accompanied her to school while they lived in Kentucky, but as he was
only seven, and as she had not yet finished her ninth year when their
father removed with them to Indiana, it is to be presumed that neither
made much progress in the matter of school education. Still it is
authoritatively stated that they attended two schools during this short
period. One of these was kept by Zachariah Riney, the other by Caleb
Hazel. It is difficult at this late day to learn much of the boy
Abraham's life during those seven years of residence in Kentucky. One
man, * who was a clerk in the principal store in the village where the
Lincolns purchased their family supplies, remembers him as a "small boy
who came sometimes to the store with his mother. He would take his seat
on a keg of nails, and I would give him a lump of sugar. He would sit
there and eat it like any other boy; but these little acts of kindness,"
observes my informant, in an enthusiastic statement made in 1865, "so
impressed his mind that I made a steadfast friend in a man whose
power and influence have since been felt throughout the world." A
school-mate** of Lincoln's at Hazel's school, speaking of the master,
says: "He perhaps could teach spelling and reading and indifferent
writing, and possibly could cipher to the rule of three; but he had no
other qualification of a teacher, unless we accept large size and bodily
strength. Abe was a mere spindle of a boy, had his due proportion of
harmless mischief, but as we lived in a country abounding in hazel
switches, in the virtue of which the master had great faith, Abe of
course received his due allowance."
This part of the boy's history is painfully vague and dim, and even
after arriving at man's estate Mr. Lincoln was significantly
reserved when reference was made to it. It is barely mentioned in the
autobiography furnished to Fell in 1859. John Duncan,*** afterwards a
preacher of some prominence in Kentucky, relates how he and Abe on one
occasion ran a ground-hog into a crevice between two rocks, and after
working vainly almost two hours to get him out, "Abe ran off about a
quarter of a mile to a blacksmith shop, and returned with an iron hook
fastened to the end of a pole," and with this rude contrivance they
virtually "hooked" the animal out of his retreat. Austin Gollaher of
Hodgensville, claims to have saved Lincoln from drowning one day as they
were trying to "coon it" across Knob creek on a log. The boys were
in pursuit of birds, when young Lincoln fell into the water, and his
vigilant companion, who still survives to narrate the thrilling story,
fished him out with a sycamore branch.
* John B. Helm, June 20,1865.
** Samuel Haycraft, December 6,1866.
*** Letter, February 21, 1867.
Meanwhile Thomas Lincoln was becoming daily more dissatisfied with his
situation and surroundings. He had purchased, since his marriage, on the
easy terms then prevalent, two farms or tracts of land in succession;
no terms were easy enough for him, and the land, when the time for the
payment of the purchase-money rolled around, reverted to its former
owner. Kentucky, at that day, afforded few if any privileges, and
possessed fewer advantages to allure the poor man; and no doubt so it
seemed to Thomas Lincoln. The land he occupied was sterile and broken.
A mere barren glade, and destitute of timber, it required a persistent
effort to coax a living out of it; and to one of his easy-going
disposition, life there was a never-ending struggle. Stories of vast
stretches of rich and unoccupied lands in Indiana reaching his ears, and
despairing of the prospect of any betterment in his condition so long
as he remained in Kentucky, he resolved, at last, to leave the State
and seek a more inviting lodgment beyond the Ohio. The assertion made by
some of Mr. Lincoln's biographers, and so often repeated by sentimental
writers, that his father left Kentucky to avoid the sight of or contact
with slavery, lacks confirmation. In all Hardin county--at that time
a large area of territory--there were not over fifty slaves; and it
is doubtful if he saw enough of slavery to fill him with the righteous
opposition to the institution with which he has so frequently been
credited. Moreover, he never in later years manifested any especial
aversion to it.
Having determined on emigrating to Indiana, he began preparations for
removal in the fall of 1816 by building for his use a flat-boat. Loading
it with his tools and other personal effects, including in the invoice,
as we are told, four hundred gallons of whiskey, he launched his "crazy
craft" on a tributary of Salt creek known as the Rolling Fork. Along
with the current he floated down to the Ohio river, but his rudely-made
vessel, either from the want of experience in its navigator, or because
of its ill adaptation to withstand the force and caprices of the
currents in the great river, capsized one day, and boat and cargo went
to the bottom. The luckless boatman set to work however, and by dint of
great patience and labor succeeded in recovering the tools and the bulk
of the whiskey. Righting his boat, he continued down the river, landing
at a point called Thompson's Ferry, in Perry county, on the Indiana
side. Here he disposed of his vessel, and placing his goods in the care
of a settler named Posey, he struck out through the interior in search
of a location for his new home. Sixteen miles back from the river he
found one that pleased his fancy, and he marked it off for himself.
His next move in the order of business was a journey to Vincennes to
purchase the tract at the Land Office--under the "two-dollar-an-acre
law," as Dennis Hanks puts it--and a return to the land to identify it
by blazing the trees and piling up brush on the corners to establish the
proper boundary lines. Having secured a place for his home he trudged
back to Kentucky--walking all the way--for his family. Two horses
brought them and all their household effects to the Indiana shore. Posey
kindly gave or hired them the use of a wagon, into which they packed not
only their furniture and carpenter tools, but the liquor, which it
is presumed had lain undisturbed in the former's cellar. Slowly and
carefully picking their way through the dense woods, they at last
reached their destination on the banks of Little Pigeon creek. There
were some detentions on the way, but no serious mishaps.
The head of the household now set resolutely to work to build a shelter
for his family.
The structure, when completed, was fourteen feet square, and was built
of small unhewn logs. In the language of the day, it was called a
"half-faced camp," being enclosed on all sides but one. It had neither
floor, door, nor windows. In this forbidding hovel these doughty
emigrants braved the exposure of the varying seasons for an entire year.
At the end of that time Thomas and Betsy Sparrow followed, bringing
with them Dennis Hanks; and to them Thomas Lincoln surrendered the
"half-faced camp," while he moved into a more pretentious structure--a
cabin enclosed on all sides. The country was thickly covered with
forests of walnut, beech, oak, elm, maple, and an undergrowth of
dog-wood, sumac, and wild grape-vine. In places where the growth was not
so thick grass came up abundantly, and hogs found plenty of food in the
unlimited quantity of mast the woods afforded. The country abounded in
bear, deer, turkey, and other wild game, which not only satisfied the
pioneer's love for sport, but furnished his table with its supply of
meat.
Thomas Lincoln, with the aid of the Hankses and Sparrows, was for a time
an attentive farmer. The implements of agriculture then in use were as
rude as they were rare, and yet there is nothing to show that in spite
of the slow methods then in vogue he did not make commendable speed. "We
raised corn mostly"--relates Dennis--"and some wheat--enough for a cake
Sunday morning. Hog and venison hams were a legal tender, and coon skins
also. We raised sheep and cattle, but they did not bring much. Cows and
calves were only worth six to eight dollars; corn ten cents, and wheat
twenty-five cents, a bushel." So with all his application and frugality
the head of this ill-assorted household made but little headway in the
accumulation of the world's goods. We are told that he was indeed a poor
man, and that during his entire stay in Indiana his land barely yielded
him sufficient return to keep his larder supplied with the commonest
necessaries of life. His skill as a hunter--though never brought into
play unless at the angered demand of a stomach hungry for meat--in no
slight degree made up for the lack of good management in the cultivation
of his land. His son Abraham* never evinced the same fondness for
hunting, although his cousin Dennis with much pride tells us how he
could kill a wild turkey on the wing. "At that time," relates one of the
latter's playmates** descanting on the abundance of wild game, "there
were a great many deer-licks; and Abe and myself would go to these licks
sometimes and watch of nights to kill deer, though Abe was not so fond
of a gun or the sport as I was."***
* "Abe was a good boy--an affectionate one--a boy who loved
his parents well and was obedient to their every wish.
Although anything but an impudent or rude boy he was
sometimes uncomfortably inquisitive. When strangers would
ride along or pass by his father's fence he always--either
through boyish pride or to tease his father--would be sure
to ask the first question. His father would sometimes knock
him over. When thus punished he never bellowed, but dropped
a kind of silent, unwelcome tear as evidence of his
sensitiveness or other feelings."--Dennis Hanks, MS., June
13,1865.
** David Turnham, MS. letter, June 10, 1866.
*** Mr. Lincoln used to relate the following "coon" story:
His father had at home a little yellow house-dog, which
invariably gave the alarm if the boys undertook to slip away
unobserved after night had set in--as they oftentimes did--
to go coon hunting. One evening Abe and his step-brother,
John Johnston, with the usual complement of boys required in
a successful coon hunt, took the insignificant little cur
with them. They located the coveted coon, killed him, and
then in a sportive vein sewed the hide on the diminutive
yellow dog. The latter struggled vigorously during the
operation of sewing on, and being released from the hands of
his captors made a bee-line for home. Other large and more
important canines, on the way, scenting coon, tracked the
little animal home, and possibly mistaking him for real
coon, speedily demolished him. The next morning old Thomas
Lincoln discovered lying in his yard the lifeless remains of
yellow "Joe," with strong proof of coon-skin accompaniment.
"Father was much incensed at his death," observed Mr.
Lincoln, in relating the story, "but as John and I, scantily
protected from the morning wind, stood shivering in the
doorway, we felt assured little yellow Joe would never be
able again to sound the call for another coon hunt."
The cabin to which the Lincoln family removed after leaving the little
half-faced camp to the Sparrows was in some respects a pretentious
structure. It was of hewed logs, and was eighteen feet square. It
was high enough to admit of a loft, where Abe slept, and to which
he ascended each night by means of pegs driven in the wall. The rude
furniture was in keeping with the surroundings. Three-legged stools
answered for chairs. The bedstead, made of poles fastened in the cracks
of the logs on one side, and supported by a crotched stick driven in
the ground floor on the other, was covered with skins, leaves, and old
clothes. A table of the same finish as the stools, a few pewter dishes,
a Dutch oven, and a skillet completed the household outfit. In this
uninviting frontier structure the future President was destined to pass
the greater part of his boyhood. Withal his spirits were light, and it
cannot be denied that he must have enjoyed unrestrained pleasure in his
surroundings. It is related that one day the only thing that graced the
dinner-table was a dish of roasted potatoes. The elder Lincoln, true
to the custom of the day, returned thanks for the blessing. The boy,
realizing the scant proportions of the meal, looked up into his father's
face and irreverently observed, "Dad, I call these"--meaning the
potatoes--"mighty poor blessings." Among other children of a similar age
he seemed unconsciously to take the lead, and it is no stretch of the
truth to say that they, in turn, looked up to him. He may have been a
little precocious--children sometimes are--but in view of the summary
treatment received at the hands of his father it cannot truthfully be
said he was a "spoiled child." One morning when his mother was at work
he ran into the cabin from the outside to enquire, with a quizzical
grin, "Who was the father of Zebedee's children?" As many another mother
before and since has done, she brushed the mischievous young inquirer
aside to attend to some more important detail of household concern.*
* Harriet Chapman, MS. letter.
The dull routine of chores and household errands in the boy's every-day
life was brightened now and then by a visit to the mill. I often in
later years heard Mr. Lincoln say that going to mill gave him the
greatest pleasure of his boyhood days.
"We had to go seven miles to mill," relates David Turnham, the friend
of his youth, "and then it was a hand-mill that would only grind from
fifteen to twenty bushels of corn in a day. There was but little wheat
grown at that time, and when we did have wheat we had to grind it in the
mill described and use it without bolting, as there were no bolts in the
country. Abe and I had to do the milling, frequently going twice to get
one grist."
In his eleventh year he began that marvellous and rapid growth in
stature for which he was so widely noted in the Pigeon creek settlement.
"As he shot up," says Turnham, "he seemed to change in appearance and
action. Although quick-witted and ready with an answer, he began to
exhibit deep thoughtfulness, and was so often lost in studied reflection
we could not help noticing the strange turn in his actions. He disclosed
rare timidity and sensitiveness, especially in the presence of men and
women, and although cheerful enough in the presence of the boys, he did
not appear to seek our company as earnestly as before."* It was only
the development we find in the history of every boy. Nature was a
little abrupt in the case of Abraham Lincoln; she tossed him from the
nimbleness of boyhood to the gravity of manhood in a single night.
* D. Turnham, MS. letter.
In the fall of 1818, the scantily settled region in the vicinity of
Pigeon creek--where the Lincolns were then living--suffered a visitation
of that dread disease common in the West in early days, and known in the
vernacular of the frontier as "the milk-sick." It hovered like a spectre
over the Pigeon creek settlement for over ten years, and its fatal
visitation and inroads among the Lincolns, Hankses, and Sparrows finally
drove that contingent into Illinois. To this day the medical profession
has never agreed upon any definite cause for the malady, nor have they
in all their scientific wrangling determined exactly what the disease
itself is. A physician, who has in his practice met a number of cases,
describes the symptoms to be "a whitish coat on the tongue, burning
sensation of the stomach, severe vomiting, obstinate constipation of the
bowels, coolness of the extremities, great restlessness and jactitation,
pulse rather small, somewhat more frequent than natural, and slightly
chorded. In the course of the disease the coat on the tongue becomes
brownish and dark, the countenance dejected, and the prostration of the
patient is great. A fatal termination may take place in sixty hours,
or life may be prolonged for a period of fourteen days. These are the
symptoms of the disease in an acute form. Sometimes it runs into the
chronic form, or it may assume that form from the commencement, and
after months or years the patient may finally die or recover only a
partial degree of health."
When the disease broke out in the Pigeon creek region it not only
took off the people, but it made sad havoc among the cattle. One man
testifies that he "lost four milch cows and eleven calves in one week."
This, in addition to the risk of losing his own life, was enough, he
declared, to ruin him, and prompted him to leave for "points further
west."
Early in October of the year 1818, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow fell ill
of the disease and died within a few days of each other. Thomas Lincoln
performed the services of undertaker. With his whipsaw he cut out the
lumber, and with commendable promptness he nailed together the rude
coffins to enclose the forms of the dead. The bodies were borne to a
scantily cleared knoll in the midst of the forest, and there, without
ceremony, quietly let down into the grave. Meanwhile Abe's mother had
also fallen a victim to the insidious disease. Her sufferings, however,
were destined to be of brief duration. Within a week she too rested from
her labors. "She struggled on, day by day," says one of the household,
"a good Christian woman, and died on the seventh day after she was
taken sick. Abe and his sister Sarah waited on their mother, and did the
little jobs and errands required of them. There was no physician nearer
than thirty-five miles. The mother knew she was going to die, and called
the children to her bedside. She was very weak, and the children leaned
over while she gave her last message. Placing her feeble hand on little
Abe's head she told him to be kind and good to his father and sister;
to both she said, 'Be good to one another,' expressing a hope that they
might live, as they had been taught by her, to love their kindred
and worship God." Amid the miserable surroundings of a home in the
wilderness Nancy Hanks passed across the dark river. Though of lowly
birth, the victim of poverty and hard usage, she takes a place in
history as the mother of a son who liberated a race of men. At her side
stands another Mother whose son performed a similar service for all
mankind eighteen hundred years before.
After the death of their mother little Abe and his sister Sarah began a
dreary life--indeed, one more cheerless and less inviting seldom falls
to the lot of any child. In a log-cabin without a floor, scantily
protected from the severities of the weather, deprived of the comfort of
a mother's love, they passed through a winter the most dismal either
one ever experienced. Within a few months, and before the close of the
winter, David Elkin, an itinerant preacher whom Mrs. Lincoln had known
in Kentucky, happened into the settlement, and in response to the
invitation from the family and friends, delivered a funeral sermon
over her grave. No one is able now to 'remember the language of Parson
Elkin's discourse, but it is recalled that he commemorated the virtues
and good phases of character, and passed in silence the few shortcomings
and frailties of the poor woman sleeping under the winter's snow.
She had done her work in this world. Stoop-shouldered, thin-breasted,
sad,--at times miserable,--groping through the perplexities of life,
without prospect of any betterment in her condition, she passed from
earth, little dreaming of the grand future that lay in store for the
ragged, hapless little boy who stood at her bedside in the last days of
her life.
Thomas Lincoln's widowerhood was brief. He had scarcely mourned the
death of his first wife a year until he reappeared in Kentucky at
Elizabethtown in search of another. His admiration had centred for a
second time on Sally Bush, the widow of Daniel Johnston, the jailer of
Hardin county, who had died several years before of a disease known
as the "cold plague." The tradition still kept alive in the Kentucky
neighborhood is that Lincoln had been a suitor for the hand of the lady
before his marriage to Nancy Hanks, but that she had rejected him for
the hand of the more fortunate Johnston. However that may have been, it
is certain that he began his campaign in earnest this time, and after
a brief siege won her heart. "He made a very short courtship," wrote
Samuel Haycraft* to me in a letter, December 7, 1866. "He came to see
her on the first day of December, 1819, and in a straightforward
manner told her that they had known each other from childhood. '_Miss_
Johnston,' said he, 'I have no wife and you no husband. I came a-purpose
to marry you. I knowed you from a gal and you knowed me from a boy. I've
no time to lose; and if you're willin' let it be done straight off.' She
replied that she could not marry him right off, as she had some little
debts which she wanted to pay first. He replied, 'Give me a list of
them.' He got the list and paid them that evening. Next morning I issued
the license, and they were married within sixty yards of my house."
Lincoln's brother-in-law, Ralph Krume, and his four horses and spacious
wagon were again brought into requisition. With commendable generosity
he transported the newly married pair and their household effects to
their home in Indiana. The new Mrs. Lincoln was accompanied by her three
children, John, Sarah, and Matilda. Her social status is fixed by the
comparison of a neighbor, who observed that "life among the Hankses, the
Lincolns, and the Enlows was a long ways below life among the Bushes."
* Clerk of the Court. MS.
In the eyes of her spouse she could not be regarded as a poor widow.
She was the owner of a goodly stock of furniture and household goods;
bringing with her among other things a walnut bureau valued at fifty
dollars. What effect the new family, their collection of furniture,
cooking utensils, and comfortable bedding must have had on the
astonished and motherless pair who from the door of Thomas Lincoln's
forlorn cabin watched the well-filled wagon as it came creaking through
the woods can better be imagined than described. Surely Sarah and Abe,
as the stores of supplies were rolled in through the doorless doorways,
must have believed that a golden future awaited them. The presence and
smile of a motherly face in the cheerless cabin radiated sunshine into
every neglected corner. If the Lincoln mansion did not in every respect
correspond to the representations made by its owner to the new Mrs.
Lincoln before marriage, the latter gave no expression of disappointment
or even surprise. With true womanly courage and zeal she set resolutely
to work to make right that which seemed wrong. Her husband was made to
put a floor in the cabin, as well as to supply doors and windows. The
cracks between the logs were plastered up. A clothes-press filled the
space between the chimney jamb and the wall, and the mat of corn husks
and leaves on which the children had slept in the corner gave way to the
comfortable luxuriance of a feather bed. She washed the two orphans, and
fitted them out in clothes taken from the stores of her own. The work of
renovation in and around the cabin continued until even Thomas Lincoln
himself, under the general stimulus of the new wife's presence, caught
the inspiration, and developed signs of intense activity. The advent of
Sarah Bush was certainly a red-letter day for the Lincolns. She was not
only industrious and thrifty, but gentle and affectionate; and her
newly adopted children for the first time, perhaps, realized the benign
influence of a mother's love. Of young Abe she was especially fond, and
we have her testimony that her kindness and care for him were warmly
and bountifully returned. Her granddaughter furnished me* in after years
with this description of her:
* Harriet Chapman. MS.
"My grandmother is a very tall woman, straight as an Indian, of
fair complexion, and was, when I first remember her, very handsome,
sprightly, talkative, and proud. She wore her hair curled till gray;
is kind-hearted and very charitable, and also very industrious." In
September, 1865, I visited the old lady* and spent an entire day with
her. She was then living on the farm her stepson had purchased and given
her, eight miles south of the town of Charleston, in Illinois. She died
on the 10th of April, 1869.
* During my interview with this old lady I was much and
deeply impressed with the sincerity of her affection for her
illustrious stepson. She declined to say much in answer to
my questions about Nancy Hanks, her predecessor in the
Lincoln household, but spoke feelingly of the latter's
daughter and son. Describing Mr. Lincoln's last visit to her
in February, 1861, she broke into tears and wupt bitterly.
"I did not want Abe to run for President," she sobbed, "and
did not want to see him elected. I was afraid that something
would happen to him, and when he came down to see me, after
he was elected President, I still felt, and my heart told
me, that something would befall him, and that I should never
see him again. Abe and his father are in heaven now, I am
sure, and I expect soon to go there and meet them."
[Illustration: Sarah Bush Lincoln 070]
After photograph taken in 1865.
The two sets of children in the Lincoln household--to their credit be it
said--lived together in perfect accord. Abe was in his tenth year, and
his stepmother, awake to the importance of an education, made a way for
him to attend school. To her he seemed full of promise; and although not
so quick of comprehension as other boys, yet she believed in encouraging
his every effort. He had had a few weeks of schooling under Riney and
Hazel in Kentucky, but it is hardly probable that he could read; he
certainly could not write. As illustrating his moral make-up, I diverge
from the chronological order of the narrative long enough to relate an
incident which occurred some years later. In the Lincoln family, Matilda
Johnston, or Tilda, as her mother called her, was the youngest child.
After Abe had reached the estate of manhood, she was still in her 'teens.
It was Abe's habit each morning one fall, to leave the house early, his
axe on his shoulder, to clear a piece of forest which lay some distance
from home. He frequently carried his dinner with him, and remained all
day. Several times the young and frolicsome 'Tilda sought to accompany
him, but was each time restrained by her mother, who firmly forbade
a repetition of the attempt. One morning the girl escaped maternal
vigilance, and slyly followed after the young woodman, who had gone some
distance from the house, and was already hidden from view behind the
dense growth of trees and underbrush. Following a deer-path, he went
singing along, little dreaming of the girl in close pursuit. The latter
gained on him, and when within a few feet, darted forward and with
a cat-like leap landed squarely on his back. With one hand on
each shoulder, she planted her knee in the middle of his back, and
dexterously brought the powerful frame of the rail-splitter to the
ground. It was a trick familiar to every schoolboy. Abe, taken by
surprise, was unable at first to turn around or learn who his assailant
was. In the fall to the ground, the sharp edge of the axe imbedded
itself in the young lady's ankle, inflicting a wound from which there
came a generous effusion of blood. With sundry pieces of cloth torn from
Abe's shirt and the young lady's dress, the flow of blood was stanched,
and the wound rudely bound up. The girl's cries having lessened
somewhat, her tall companion, looking at her in blank astonishment,
knowing what an in-fraction the whole thing was of her mother's
oft-repeated instructions, asked; "'Tilda, what are you going to tell
mother about getting hurt?" "Tell her I did it with the axe," she
sobbed. "That will be the truth, won't it?" To which last inquiry Abe
manfully responded,
"Yes, that's the truth, but it's not all the truth. Tell the whole
truth,'Tilda, and trust your good mother for the rest."
This incident was, many years afterward, related to me by'Tilda, who was
then the mother of a devoted and interesting family herself.
Hazel Dorsey was Abe's first teacher in Indiana. He held forth a mile
and a half from the Lincoln farm. The school-house was built of round
logs, and was just high enough for a man to stand erect under the loft.
The floor was of split logs, or what were called puncheons. The chimney
was made of poles and clay; and the windows were made by cutting out
parts of two logs, placing pieces of split boards a proper distance
apart, and over the aperture thus formed pasting pieces of greased
paper to admit light. At school Abe evinced ability enough to gain him a
prominent place in the respect of the teacher and the affections of his
fellow-scholars.*
* "He always appeared to be very quiet during playtime; never
was rude; seemed to have a liking for solitude; was the one
chosen in almost every case to adjust difficulties between
boys of his age and size, and when appealed to, his decision
was an end of the trouble. He was also rather noted for
keeping his clothes clean longer than any of the others, and
although considered a boy of courage, had few, if any,
difficulties."--E. R. Burba, letter, March 31, 1866.
Elements of leadership in him seem to have manifested themselves
already. Nathaniel Grigsby--whose brother, Aaron, afterwards married
Abe's sister, Sarah--attended the same school. He certifies to Abe's
proficiency and worth in glowing terms.
"He was always at school early," writes Grigsby, "and attended to his
studies. He was always at the head of his class, and passed us rapidly
in his studies. He lost no time at home, and when he was not at work was
at his books. He kept up his studies on Sunday, and carried his books
with him to work, so that he might read when he rested from labor." Now
and then, the family exchequer running low, it would be found necessary
for the young rail-splitter to stop school, and either work with his
father on the farm, or render like service for the neighbors. These
periods of work occurred so often and continued so long, that all his
school days added together would not make a year in the aggregate. When
he attended school, his sister Sarah usually accompanied him. "Sally was
a quick-minded young woman," is the testimony of a school-mate. "She was
more industrious than Abe, in my opinion. I can hear her good-humored
laugh now. Like her brother, she could greet you kindly and put you at
ease. She was really an intelligent woman." *
* Nat Grigsby, Sept. 12,1865, MS.
Abe's love for books, and his determined effort to obtain an education
in spite of so many obstacles, induced the belief in his father's mind,
that book-learning was absorbing a greater proportion of his energy and
industry than the demands of the farm. The old gentleman had but little
faith in the value of books or papers,* and hence the frequent drafts
he made on the son to aid in the drudgery of daily toil. He undertook
to teach him his own trade**--he was a carpenter and joiner--but Abe
manifested such a striking want of interest that the effort to make a
carpenter of him was soon abandoned.
* "I induced my husband to permit Abe to read and study at
home as well as at school. At first he was not easily
reconciled to it, but finally he too seemed willing to
encourage him to a certain extent. Abe was a dutiful son to
me always, and we took particular care when he was reading
not to disturb him--would let him read on and on till he
quit of his own accord."--Mrs. Thomas Lincoln, Sept. 8,
1865.
** A little walnut cabinet, two feet high, and containing
two rows of neat drawers, now in the possession of Captain
J. W. Wartmann, clerk of the United States Court in
Evansville, Ind., is carefully preserved as a specimen of
the joint work of Lincoln and his father at this time.
At Dorsey's school Abe was ten years old; at the next one, Andrew
Crawford's, he was about fourteen; and at Swaney's he was in his
seventeenth year. The last school required a walk of over four miles,
and on account of the distance his attendance was not only irregular but
brief. Schoolmaster Crawford introduced a new feature in his school, and
we can imagine its effect on his pupils, whose training had been
limited to the social requirements of the backwoods settlement. It was
instruction in manners. One scholar was required to go outside, and
re-enter the room as a lady or gentleman would enter a drawing-room or
parlor. Another scholar would receive the first party at the door, and
escort him or her about the room, making polite introductions to each
person in the room. How the gaunt and clumsy Abe went through this
performance we shall probably never know. If his awkward movements gave
rise to any amusement, his school-mates never revealed it.
The books used at school were Webster's Spelling Book and the American
Speller. All the scholars learned to cipher, and afterwards used Pike's
Arithmetic. Mr. Lincoln told me in later years that Murray's English
Reader was the best school-book ever put into the hands of an American
youth. I conclude, therefore, he must have used that also. At Crawford's
school Abe was credited with the authorship of several literary
efforts--short dissertations in which he strove to correct some
time-honored and wanton sport of the schoolboy. While in Indiana I met
several persons who recalled a commendable and somewhat pretentious
protest he wrote against cruelty to animals. The wholesome effects of a
temperate life and the horrors of war were also subjects which claimed
the services of his pen then, as they in later years demanded the
devoted attention of his mind and heart.
He was now over six feet high and was growing at a tremendous rate, for
he added two inches more before the close of his seventeenth year, thus
reaching the limit of his stature. He weighed in the region of a hundred
and sixty pounds; was wiry, vigorous, and strong. His feet and hands
were large, arms and legs long and in striking contrast with his slender
trunk and small head. "His skin was shrivelled and yellow," declares one
of the girls* who attended Crawford's school. "His shoes, when he had
any, were low. He wore buckskin breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt, and a
cap made of the skin of a squirrel or coon. His breeches were baggy and
lacked by several inches meeting the tops of his shoes, thereby exposing
his shinbone, sharp, blue, and narrow." In one branch of school learning
he was a great success; that was spelling. We are indebted to Kate Roby,
a pretty miss of fifteen, for an incident which illustrates alike his
proficiency in orthography and his natural inclination to help another
out of the mire. The word "defied" had been given out by Schoolmaster
Crawford, but had been misspelled several times when it came Miss Roby's
turn. "Abe stood on the opposite side of the room" (related Miss Roby**
to me in 1865) "and was watching me. I began d-e-f--and then I stopped,
hesitating whether to proceed with an 'i' or a 'y.' Looking up I beheld
Abe, a grin covering his face, and pointing with his index finger to his
eye. I took the hint, spelled the word with an 'i,' and it went through
all right."
* Kate Gentry.
** Miss Roby afterward married Allen Gentry.
There was more or less of an attachment between Miss Roby and Abe,
although the lady took pains to assure me that they were never in
love. She described with self-evident pleasure, however, the delightful
experience of an evening's stroll down to the river with him, where they
were wont to sit on the bank and watch the moon as it slowly rose over
the neighboring hills. Dangling their youthful feet in the water, they
gazed on the pale orb of night, as many a fond pair before them had done
and will continue to do until the end of the world. One evening, when
thus engaged, their conversation and thoughts turned on the movement of
the planets. "I did not suppose that Abe, who had seen so little of the
world, would know anything about it, but he proved to my satisfaction
that the moon did not go down at all; that it only seemed to; that the
earth, revolving from west to east, carried us under, as it were. 'We
do the sinking,' he explained; 'while to us the moon is comparatively
still. The moon's sinking is only an illusion.' I at once dubbed him a
fool, but later developments convinced me that I was the fool, not
he. He was well acquainted with the general laws of astronomy and the
movements of the heavenly bodies, but where he could have learned so
much, or how to put it so plainly, I never could understand."
[Illustration: Lines Written by Lincoln 081]
Lines written by Lincoln on the Leaf of his School-book in his
Fourteenth Year. Preserved by his Step-mother. Original in possession of
J. Weik.
Absalom Roby is authority for the statement that even at that early day
Abe was a patient reader of a Louisville newspaper, which some one
at Gentryville kindly furnished him. Among the books he read were
the Bible, "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's
Progress," a "History of the United States," and Weems' "Life of
Washington." A little circumstance attended the reading of the
last-named book, which only within recent years found its way into
public print. The book was borrowed from a close-fisted neighbor, Josiah
Crawford, and one night, while lying on a little shelf near a crack
between two logs in the Lincoln cabin during a storm, the covers were
damaged by rain. Crawford--not the schoolmaster, but old "Blue Nose,"
as Abe and others called him--assessed the damage to his book at
seventy-five cents, and the unfortunate borrower was required to pull
fodder for three days at twenty-five cents a day in settlement of
the account. While at school it is doubtful if he was able to own an
arithmetic. His stepmother was unable to remember his ever having owned
one. She gave me, however, a few leaves from a book made and bound
by Abe, in which he had entered, in a large, bold hand, the tables of
weights and measures, and the "sums" to be worked out in illustration of
each table. Where the arithmetic was obtained I could not learn. On one
of the pages which the old lady gave me, and just underneath the table
which tells how many pints there are in a bushel, the facetious young
student had scrawled these four lines of schoolboy doggerel:
"Abraham Lincoln,
His hand and pen,
He will be good,
But God knows when."
On another page were found, in his own hand, a few lines which it is
also said he composed. Nothing indicates that they were borrowed, and
I have always, therefore, believed that they were original with him.
Although a little irregular in metre, the sentiment would, I think, do
credit to an older head.
Time, what an empty vapor 'tis,
And days how swift they are:
Swift as an Indian arrow,
Fly on like a shooting star.
The present moment just is here,
Then slides away in haste,
That we can never say they're ours,
But only say they're past."
His penmanship, after some practice, became so regular in form that it
excited the admiration of other and younger boys. One of the latter,
Joseph C. Richardson, said that "Abe Lincoln was the best penman in the
neighborhood." At Richardson's request he made some copies for practice.
During my visit to Indiana I met Richardson, who showed these two lines
which Abe had prepared for him:
"Good boys who to their books apply
Will all be great men by and by."
To comprehend Mr. Lincoln fully we must know in substance not only the
facts of his origin, but also the manner of his development. It will
always be a matter of wonder to the American people, I have no
doubt--as it has been to me--that from such restricted and unpromising
opportunities in early life, Mr. Lincoln grew into the great man he was.
The foundation for his education was laid in Indiana and in the little
town of New Salem in Illinois, and in both places he gave evidence of a
nature and characteristics that distinguished him from every associate
and surrounding he had. He was not peculiar or eccentric, and yet
a shrewd observer would have seen that he was decidedly unique and
original. Although imbued with a marked dislike for manual labor, it
cannot be truthfully said of him that he was indolent. From a mental
standpoint he was one of the most energetic young men of his day.
He dwelt altogether in the land of thought. His deep meditation and
abstraction easily induced the belief among his horny-handed companions
that he was lazy. In fact, a neighbor, John Romine, makes that charge.
"He worked for me," testifies the latter, "but was always reading and
thinking. I used to get mad at him for it. I say he was awfully lazy.
He would laugh and talk--crack his jokes and tell stories all the time;
didn't love work half as much as his pay. He said to me one day that his
father taught him to work, but he never taught him to love it." Verily
there was but one Abraham Lincoln!
His chief delight during the day, if unmolested, was to lie down under
the shade of some inviting tree to read and study. At night, lying on
his stomach in front of the open fireplace, with a piece of charcoal he
would cipher on a broad wooden shovel. When the latter was covered over
on both sides he would take his father's drawing knife or plane and
shave it off clean, ready for a fresh supply of inscriptions the next
day. He often moved about the cabin with a piece of chalk, writing and
ciphering on boards and the flat sides of hewn logs. When every bare
wooden surface had been filled with his letters and ciphers he would
erase them and begin anew. Thus it was always; and the boy whom dull
old Thomas Lincoln and rustic John Romine conceived to be lazy was in
reality the most tireless worker in all the region around Gentryvllle.
His stepmother told me he devoured everything in the book line within
his reach. If in his reading he came across anything that pleased his
fancy, he entered it down in a copy-book--a sort of repository, in which
he was wont to store everything worthy of preservation. "Frequently,"
related his stepmother, "he had no paper to write his pieces down on.
Then he would put them with chalk on a board or plank, sometimes only
making a few signs of what he intended to write. When he got paper he
would copy them, always bringing them to me and reading them. He would
ask my opinion of what he had read, and often explained things to me in
his plain and simple language." How he contrived at the age of fourteen
to absorb information is thus told by John Hanks: "When Abe and I
returned to the house from work he would go to the cupboard, snatch a
piece of corn bread, sit down, take a book, cock his legs up as high
as his head, and read. We grubbed, plowed, mowed, and worked together
barefooted in the field. Whenever Abe had a chance in the field while
at work, or at the house, he would stop and read." He kept the Bible and
"AEsop's Fables" always within reach, and read them over and over again.
These two volumes furnished him with the many figures of speech and
parables which he used with such happy effect in his later and public
utterances.
Amid such restricted and unromantic environments the boy developed into
the man. The intellectual fire burned slowly, but with a steady and
intense glow. Although denied the requisite training of the school-room,
he was none the less competent to cope with those who had undergone that
discipline. No one had a more retentive memory. If he read or heard
a good thing it never escaped him. His powers of concentration were
intense, and in the ability through analysis to strip bare a proposition
he was unexcelled. His thoughtful and investigating mind dug down after
ideas, and never stopped till bottom facts were reached. With such a
mental equipment the day was destined to come when the world would need
the services of his intellect and heart. That he was equal to the great
task when the demand came is but another striking proof of the grandeur
of his character.