[Illustration: A. Lincoln]
Makers of History.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
AND THE
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN
THE UNITED STATES
BY
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
AUTHOR OF “HANS BREITMANN’S BALLADS,” “THE EGYPTIAN SKETCH BOOK,”
ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
H. M. CALDWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS.
1879
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.
In issuing this second edition of Mr. Leland’s biography, the
publishers have taken occasion to correct a few errors in dates and
proper names, and in citations from documents, that had crept into the
first edition.
The book was prepared during the author’s residence abroad, where he
did not have at hand for reference all the authorities needed, and as
it was stereotyped in London the above oversights were not at once
detected.
PREFACE.
I make no apology for adding another “Life of Abraham Lincoln” to
the many already written, as I believe it impossible to make such an
example of successful perseverance allied to honesty, as the great
President gave, too well known to the world. And as I know of no other
man whose life shows so perfectly what may be effected by resolute
self-culture, and adherence to good principles in spite of obstacles,
I infer that such an example cannot be too extensively set before all
young men who are ambitious to do _well_ in the truest sense. There
are also other reasons why it should be studied. The life of Abraham
Lincoln during his Presidency is simply that of his country--since he
was so intimately concerned with every public event of his time, that
as sometimes happens with photographs, so with the biography of Lincoln
and the history of his time, we cannot decide whether the great
picture was enlarged from the smaller one, or the smaller reduced from
a greater. His career also fully proves that extremes meet, since in no
despotism is there an example of any one who ever governed so great a
country so thoroughly in detail as did this Republican of Republicans,
whose one thought was simply to obey the people.
It is of course impossible to give within the limits of a small book
all the details of a busy life, and also the history of the American
Emancipation and its causes; but I trust that I have omitted little of
much importance. The books to which I have been chiefly indebted, and
from which I have borrowed most freely, are the lives of Lincoln by W.
H. Lamon, and by my personal friends H. J. Raymond and Dr. Holland; and
also the works referring to the war by I. N. Arnold, F. B. Carpenter,
L. P. Brockett, A. Boyd, G. W. Bacon, J. Barrett, Adam Badeau, and F.
Moore.
C. G. L.
_June, 1879._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Birth of Abraham Lincoln--The Lincoln Family--Abraham’s
first Schooling--Death of Mrs. Lincoln, and the new
“Mother”--Lincoln’s Boyhood and Youth--Self-Education--
Great Physical Strength--First Literary Efforts--Journey
to New Orleans--Encouraging Incident, 9
CHAPTER II.
Lincoln’s Appearance--His First Public Speech--Again at New
Orleans--Mechanical Genius--Clerk in a Country Store--Elected
Captain--The Black Hawk War--Is a successful Candidate for the
Legislature--Becomes a Storekeeper, Land Surveyor, and
Postmaster--His First Love--The “Long Nine”--First Step towards
Emancipation, 30
CHAPTER III.
Lincoln settles at Springfield as a Lawyer--Candidate for the
office of Presidential Elector--A Love Affair--Marries Miss
Todd--Religious Views--Exerts himself for Henry Clay--Elected
to Congress in 1846--Speeches in Congress--Out of Political
Employment until 1854--Anecdotes of Lincoln as a Lawyer, 53
CHAPTER IV.
Rise of the Southern Party--Formation of the Abolition and the Free
Soil Parties--Judge Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill--Douglas
defeated by Lincoln--Lincoln resigns as Candidate for
Congress--Lincoln’s Letter on Slavery--The Bloomington Speech--The
Fremont Campaign--Election of Buchanan--The Dred-Scott
Decision, 64
CHAPTER V.
Causes of Lincoln’s Nomination to the Presidency--His Lectures in
New York, &c.--The First Nomination and the Fence Rails--The
Nomination at Chicago--Elected President--Office-seekers and
Appointments--Lincoln’s Impartiality--The South determined to
Secede--Fears for Lincoln’s Life, 78
CHAPTER VI.
A Suspected Conspiracy--Lincoln’s Departure for Washington--His
Speeches at Springfield and on the road to the National
Capital--Breaking out of the Rebellion--Treachery of President
Buchanan--Treason in the Cabinet--Jefferson Davis’s
Message--Threats of Massacre and Ruin to the North--Southern
Sympathisers--Lincoln’s Inaugural Address--The Cabinet--The Days
of Doubt and of Darkness, 88
CHAPTER VII.
Mr. Seward refuses to meet the Rebel Commissioners--Lincoln’s
Forbearance--Fort Sumter--Call for 75,000 Troops--Troubles in
Maryland--Administrative Prudence--Judge Douglas--Increase of
the Army--Winthrop and Ellsworth--Bull Run--General
M‘Clellan, 102
CHAPTER VIII.
Relations with Europe--Foreign Views of the War--The
Slaves--Proclamation of Emancipation--Arrest of Rebel
Commissioners--Black Troops, 117
CHAPTER IX.
Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-two--The Plan of the War, and
Strength of the Armies--General M‘Clellan--The General Movement,
January 27th, 1862--The brilliant Western Campaign--Removal of
M‘Clellan--The _Monitor_--Battle of Fredericksburg--Vallandigham
and Seymour--The _Alabama_--President Lincoln declines all
Foreign Mediation, 154
CHAPTER X.
Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-three--A Popular Prophecy--General
Burnside relieved and General Hooker appointed--Battle of
Chancellorsville--The Rebels invade Pennsylvania--Battle of
Gettysburg--Lincoln’s Speech at Gettysburg--Grant takes
Vicksburg--Port Hudson--Battle of Chattanooga--New York
Riots--The French in Mexico--Troubles in Missouri, 147
CHAPTER XI.
Proclamation of Amnesty--Lincoln’s Benevolence--His
Self-reliance--Progress of the Campaign--The Summer of
1864--Lincoln’s Speech at Philadelphia--Suffering in the
South--Raids--Sherman’s March--Grant’s Position--Battle of
the Wilderness--Siege of Petersburg--Chambersburg--Naval
Victories--Confederate Intrigues--Presidential Election--Lincoln
Re-elected--Atrocious Attempts of the Confederates, 172
CHAPTER XII.
The President’s Reception of Negroes--The South opens Negotiations
for Peace--Proposals--Lincoln’s Second Inauguration--The Last
Battle--Davis Captured--End of the War--Death of Lincoln--Public
Mourning, 203
CHAPTER XIII.
President Lincoln’s Characteristics--His Love of Humour--His
Stories--Pithy Sayings--Repartees--His Dignity, 233
INDEX, 245
LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
CHAPTER I.
Birth of Abraham Lincoln--The Lincoln Family--Abraham’s
first Schooling--Death of Mrs. Lincoln, and the new
“Mother”--Lincoln’s Boyhood and Youth--Self-Education--Great
Physical Strength--First Literary Efforts--Journey to New
Orleans--Encouraging Incident.
Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, on the 12th day of February,
1809. The log-cabin which was his birth-place was built on the south
branch of Nolin’s Creek, three miles from the village of Hodgensville,
on land which was then in the county of Hardin, but is now included
in that of La Rue. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was born in 1778; his
mother’s maiden name was Nancy Hanks. The Lincoln family, which appears
to have been of unmixed English descent, came to Kentucky from Berks
County, Pennsylvania, to which place tradition or conjecture asserts
they had emigrated from Massachusetts. But they did not remain long in
Pennsylvania, since they seem to have gone before 1752 to Rockingham,
County Virginia, which state was then one with that of Kentucky.
There is, however, so much doubt as to these details of their early
history, that it is not certain whether they were at first emigrants
directly from England to Virginia, an offshoot of the historic Lincoln
family in Massachusetts, or of the highly respectable Lincolns of
Pennsylvania.[1] This obscurity is plainly due to the great poverty and
lowly station of the Virginian Lincolns. “My parents,” said President
Lincoln, in a brief autobiographic sketch,[2] “were both born of
undistinguished families--second families, perhaps, I should say.”
To this he adds that his paternal grandfather was Abraham Lincoln,
who migrated from Rockingham, County Virginia, to Kentucky, “about
1781 or 2,” although his cousins and other relatives all declare
this grandsire’s name to have been Mordecai--a striking proof of the
ignorance and indifference of the family respecting matters seldom
neglected.
This grandfather, Abraham or Mordecai, having removed to Kentucky, “the
dark and bloody ground,” settled in Mercer County. Their house was
a rough log-cabin, their farm a little clearing in the midst of the
forest. One morning, not long after their settlement, the father took
Thomas, his youngest son, and went to build a fence a short distance
from the house, while the other brothers, Mordecai and Josiah, were
sent to a field not far away. They were all intent upon their work,
when a shot from a party of Indians in ambush was heard. The father
fell dead. Josiah ran to a stockade, or settlement, two or three miles
off; Mordecai, the eldest boy, made his way to the house, and, looking
out from a loop-hole, saw an Indian in the act of raising his little
brother from the ground. He took deliberate aim at a silver ornament on
the breast of the Indian, and brought him down. Thomas sprang towards
the cabin, and was admitted by his mother, while Mordecai renewed his
fire at several other Indians who rose from the covert of the fence,
or thicket. It was not long before Josiah returned from the stockade
with a party of settlers; but the Indians had fled, and none were found
but the dead one, and another who was wounded, and had crept into the
top of a fallen tree. Mordecai, it is said, hated the Indians ever
after with an intensity which was unusual even in those times. As Allan
Macaulay, in “Waverley,” is said to have hunted down the Children of
the Mist, or as the Quaker Nathan, in Bird’s romance of “Nick of the
Woods,” is described as hunting the Shawnese, so we are told this
other avenger of blood pursued his foes with unrelenting, unscrupulous
hatred. For days together he would follow peaceable Indians as they
passed through the settlements, in order to get secret shots at
them.[3]
Mordecai, the Indian-killer, and his brother, Josiah, remained in
Virginia, and grew up to be respectable, prosperous men. The younger
brother, Thomas, was always “idle, thriftless, poor, a hunter, and
a rover.” He exercised occasionally in a rough way the calling of a
carpenter, and, wandering from place to place, began at different
times to cultivate the wilderness, but with little success, owing
to his laziness. Yet he was a man of great strength and vigour, and
once “thrashed the monstrous bully of Breckinridge County in three
minutes, and came off without a scratch.” He was an inveterate talker,
or popular teller of stories and anecdotes, and a Jackson Democrat in
politics, which signified that he belonged to the more radical of the
two political parties which then prevailed in America. In religion, he
was, says Lamon, who derived his information from Mr. W. H. Herndon,
“nothing at times, and a member of various denominations by turns.” In
1806, he lived at Elizabethtown, in Hardin County, Kentucky, where, in
the same year and place, he married Nancy Hanks: the exact date of the
marriage is unknown. It is said of this young woman that she was a tall
and beautiful brunette, with an understanding which, by her family
at least, was considered wonderful. She could read and write--as rare
accomplishments in those days in Kentucky backwoods as they still are
among the poor whites of the South or their Western descendants.[4]
In later life she was sadly worn by hard labour, both in the house
and fields, and her features were marked with a melancholy which was
probably constitutional, and which her son inherited.
It is to be regretted that President Abraham Lincoln never spoke,
except with great reluctance, of his early life, or of his parents.
As it is, the researches of W. H. Herndon and others have indicated
the hereditary sources of his chief characteristics. We know that the
grandfather was a vigorous backwoodsman, who died a violent death;
that his uncle was a grim and determined manslayer, carrying out for
years the blood-feud provoked by the murder of his parent; that his
mother was habitually depressed, and that his father was a favourite
of both men and women, though a mere savage when irritated, fond of
fun, an endless storyteller, physically powerful, and hating hard work.
Out of all these preceding traits, it is not difficult to imagine
how the giant Abraham came to be inflexible of purpose and strong of
will, though indolent--why he was good-natured to excess in his excess
of strength--and why he was a great humourist, and at the same time a
melancholy man.
It should be remembered by the reader that the state of society in
which Abraham Lincoln was born and grew up resembled nothing now
existing in Europe, and that it is very imperfectly understood even
by many town-dwelling Americans. The people around him were all poor
and ignorant, yet they bore their poverty lightly, were hardly aware
of their want of culture, and were utterly unconscious of owing the
least respect or deference to any human being. Some among them were,
of course, aware of the advantages to be derived from wealth and
political power; but the majority knew not how to spend the one, and
were indifferent to the other. Even to this day, there are in the
South and South-West scores of thousands of men who, owning vast
tracts of fertile land, and gifted with brains and muscle, will not
take the pains to build themselves homes better than ordinary cabins,
or cultivate more soil than will supply life with plain and unvaried
sustenance. The only advantage they have is the inestimable one,
if properly treated, of being free from all trammels save those of
ignorance. To rightly appreciate the good or evil qualities of men
moulded in such society, requires great generosity, and great freedom
from all that is conventional.
Within the first few years of her married life, Nancy Hanks Lincoln
bore her husband three children. The first was a daughter, named Sarah,
who married at fifteen, and died soon after; the second was Abraham;
and the third Thomas, who died in infancy.[5] The family were always
wretchedly poor, even below the level of their neighbours in want; and
as the father was indolent, the wife was obliged to labour and suffer.
But it is probable that Mrs. Lincoln, who could read, and Thomas, who
attributed his failure in life to ignorance, wished their children to
be educated. Schools were, of course, scarce in a country where the
houses are often many miles apart. Zachariah Riney, a Catholic priest,
was Abraham’s first teacher; his next was Caleb Hazel. The young
pupil learned to read and write in a few weeks; but in all his life,
reckoning his instruction by days, he had only one year’s schooling.
When Thomas Lincoln was first married (1806), he took his wife to
live in Elizabethtown, in a wretched shed, which has since been used
as a slaughter-house and stable. About a year after, he removed to
Nolin’s Creek. Four years after the birth of Abraham (1809), he again
migrated to a more picturesque and fertile place, a few miles distant
on Knob Creek. Here he remained four years, and though he was the
occupant of over 200 acres of good land, never cultivated more than a
little patch, “being satisfied with milk and meal for food.” When his
children went to school they walked eight miles, going and returning,
having only maize bread for dinner. In 1816, the father, after having
sold his interest in the farm for ten barrels of whiskey and twenty
dollars, built himself a crazy flat-boat, and set sail alone on the
Ohio, seeking for a new home. By accident, the boat foundered, and
much of the cargo was lost; but Thomas Lincoln pushed on, and found a
fitting place to settle in Indiana, near the spot on which the village
of Gentryville now stands. It was in the untrodden wilderness, and
here he soon after brought his family, to live for the first year in
what is called a half-faced camp, or a rough hut of poles, of which
only three sides were enclosed, the fourth being open to the air. In
1817, Betsy Sparrow, an aunt of Mrs. Lincoln, and her husband, Thomas,
with a nephew named Dennis Hanks, joined the Lincolns, who removed to
a better house, if that could be called a house which was built of
rough logs, and had neither floor, door, nor window. For two years they
continued to live in this manner. Lincoln, a carpenter, was too lazy
to make himself the simplest furniture. They had a few three-legged
stools; the only bed was made in a singular manner. Its head and one
side were formed by a corner of the cabin, the bed-post was a single
crotch cut from the forest. Laid upon this crotch were the ends of two
hickory poles, whose other extremities were placed in two holes made in
the logs of the wall. On these sticks rested “slats,” or boards rudely
split from trees with an axe, and on these slats was laid a bag filled
with dried leaves. This was the bed of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, and
into it--when the skins hung at the cabin entrance did not keep out the
cold--little Abraham and his sister crept for warmth.[6] Very little is
recorded of the childhood of the future President. He was once nearly
drowned in a stream, and when eight years of age shot a wild turkey,
which, he declared in after life, was the largest game he had ever
killed--a remarkable statement for a man who had grown up in a deer
country, where buck-skin formed the common material for clothing, and
venison hams passed for money. One thing is at least certain--that,
till he was ten years old, the poor boy was ill-clad, dirty, and
ill-used by his father. He had, however, learned to write.
In 1818, a terrible but common epidemic, known in Western America as
the milk-fever, broke out in Indiana, and within a few days Thomas
and Betsy Sparrow and Mrs. Lincoln all died. They had no medical
attendance, and it was nine months before a clergyman, named David
Elkin, invited by the first letter which Abraham ever wrote, came one
hundred miles to hold the funeral service and preach over the graves.
Strange as it may seem, the event which is universally regarded as the
saddest of every life, in the case of Abraham Lincoln led directly to
greater happiness, and to a change which conduced to the development
of all his better qualities. Thirteen months after the death of Nancy
Lincoln, Thomas married a widow, Mrs. Johnston, whom he had wooed
ineffectually in Kentucky when she was Miss Sally Bush. She was a woman
of sense, industrious, frugal, and gifted with a pride which inspired
her to lead a far more civilised life than that which satisfied poor
Tom Lincoln. He had greatly exaggerated to her the advantages of his
home in Indiana, and she was bitterly disappointed when they reached
it. Fortunately, she owned a stock of good furniture, which greatly
astonished little Abraham and Sarah and their cousin Dennis. “She set
about mending matters with great energy, and made her husband put
down a floor, and hang windows and doors.” It was in the depth of
winter, and the children, as they nestled in the warm beds she had
provided, enjoying the strange luxury of security from the cold winds
of December, must have thanked her from the depths of their hearts.
She had brought a son and two daughters of her own, but Abraham and
his sister had an equal place in her affections. They were half naked,
and she clad them; they were dirty, and she washed them; they had been
ill-used, and she treated them with motherly tenderness. In her own
language, she “made them look a little more human.”[7]
This excellent woman loved Abraham tenderly, and her love was warmly
returned. After his death she declared to Mr. Herndon--“I can say
what not one mother in ten thousand can of a boy--Abe never gave me a
cross look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I
requested him; nor did I ever give him a cross word in all my life.
His mind and mine--what little I had--seemed to run together. He was
dutiful to me always. Abe was the best boy I ever saw, or ever expect
to see.” “When in after years Mr. Lincoln spoke of his ‘saintly mother’
and of his ‘angel of a mother,’ he referred to this noble woman,
who first made him feel ‘like a human being’--whose goodness first
touched his childish heart, and taught him that blows and taunts and
degradation were not to be his only portion in the world.” And if it
be recorded of George Washington that he never told a lie, it should
also be remembered of Abraham Lincoln, who carried his country safely
through a greater crisis than that of the Revolutionary War,[8] that he
always obeyed his mother.
Abraham had gone to school only a few weeks in Kentucky, and Mrs.
Lincoln soon sent him again to receive instruction. His first teacher
in Indiana was Hazel Dorsey; his next, Andrew Crawford. The latter, in
addition to the ordinary branches of education, also taught “manners.”
One scholar would be introduced by another, while walking round the
log schoolroom, to all the boys and girls, taught to bow properly,
and otherwise acquire the ordinary courtesies of life. Abraham
distinguished himself in spelling, which has always been a favourite
subject for competition in rural America, and he soon began to write
short original articles, though composition formed no part of the
studies. It was characteristic of the boy that his first essays were
against cruelty to animals. His mates were in the habit of catching
the box-turtles, or land-terrapins, or tortoises, and putting live
coals on their backs to make them walk, which greatly annoyed Abraham.
All who knew him, in boyhood or in later life, bear witness that this
tenderness was equal to his calm courage and tremendous physical
strength. The last school which he attended for a short time, and to
reach which he walked every day nine miles, was kept by a Mr. Swaney.
This was in 1826.
Abraham was now sixteen years of age, and had grown so rapidly that
he had almost attained the height which he afterwards reached of six
feet four inches. He was very dark, his skin was shrivelled even in
boyhood by constant exposure, and he habitually wore low shoes, a
linsey-woolsey shirt, a cap made from the skin of a raccoon or opossum,
and buckskin breeches, which were invariably about twelve inches too
short for him. When not working for his father, he was hired out as a
farm-labourer to the neighbours. His cousin, John Hanks, says--“We
worked barefoot, grubbed it, ploughed, mowed, and cradled together.”
All who knew him at this time testify that Abraham hated hard-work,
though he did it well--that he was physically indolent, though
intellectually very active--that he loved to laugh, tell stories, and
joke while labouring--and that he passed his leisure moments in hard
study or in reading, which he made hard by writing out summaries of
all he read, and getting them by heart. He would study arithmetic at
night by the light of the fire, and cipher or copy with a pencil or
coal on the wooden shovel or on a board. When this was full, he would
shave it off with his father’s drawing-knife, and begin again. When
he had paper, he used it instead; but in the frequent intervals when
he had none, the boards were kept until paper was obtained. Among the
first books which he read and thoroughly mastered were “Æsop’s Fables,”
“Robinson Crusoe,” Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a “History of the
United States,” Weem’s “Life of Washington,” and “The Revised Statutes
of Indiana.” From another work, “The Kentucky Preceptor,” a collection
of literary extracts, he is said by a Mrs. Crawford, who knew him well,
to have “learned his school orations, speeches, and pieces to write.”
The field-work, which Abraham Lincoln disliked, did not, however,
exhaust his body, and his mind found relief after toil in mastering
anything in print.[9] It is not unusual to see poor and ignorant youths
who are determined to “get learning,” apply themselves to the hardest
and dryest intellectual labour with very little discrimination of any
difference between that and more attractive literature, and it is
evident that young Lincoln worked in this spirit. There is no proof
that his memory was by nature extraordinary--it would rather seem that
the contrary was the case, from the pains which he took to improve
it. During his boyhood, any book had to him all the charm of rarity;
perhaps it was the more charming because most of his friends believed
that mental culture was incompatible with industry. “Lincoln,” said
his cousin, Dennis Hanks, “was lazy--a very lazy man. He was always
reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing poetry, and the like.”
It is evident that his custom of continually exercising his memory on
all subjects grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength.
By the time he was twenty-five, he had, without instruction, made
himself a good lawyer--not a mere “case-practitioner,” but one who
argued from a sound knowledge of principles. It is said that when he
began to read Blackstone, he thoroughly learned the first forty pages
at one sitting. There is also sufficient proof that he had perfectly
mastered not only “Euclid’s Geometry,” but a number of elementary
scientific works, among others one on astronomy. And many anecdotes
of his later life prove that he learned nothing without thinking it
over deeply, especially in all its relations to his other acquisitions
and its practical use. If education consists of mental discipline and
the acquisition of knowledge, it is idle to say that Abraham Lincoln
was uneducated, since few college graduates actually excelled him in
either respect. These facts deserve dwelling on, since, in the golden
book of self-made men, there is not one who presents a more encouraging
example to youth, and especially to the poor and ambitious, than
Abraham Lincoln. He developed his memory by resolutely training it--he
brought out his reasoning powers as a lawyer by using his memory--he
became a fluent speaker and a ready reasoner by availing himself of
every opportunity to speak or debate. From the facts which have been
gathered by his biographers, or which are current in conversation among
those who knew him, it is most evident that there seldom lived a man
who owed so little to innate genius or talents, in comparison to what
he achieved by sheer determination and perseverance.
When Abraham was fifteen or sixteen, he began to exercise his memory
in a new direction, by frequenting not only religious but political
meetings, and by mounting the stump of a tree the day after and
repeating with great accuracy all he had heard. It is said that he
mimicked with great skill not only the tones of preachers and orators,
but also their gestures and facial expressions. Anything like cruelty
to man or beast would always inspire him to an original address, in
which he would preach vigorously against inflicting pain. Wherever he
spoke an audience was sure to assemble, and as this frequently happened
in the harvest-field, the youthful orator or actor was often dragged
down by his angry father and driven to his work. His wit and humour,
his inexhaustible fund of stories, and, above all, his kind heart, made
him everywhere a favourite. Women, says Mr. Lamon, were especially
pleased, for he was always ready to do any kind of work for them, such
as chopping wood, making a fire, or nursing a baby. Any family was glad
when he was hired to work with them, since he did his work well, and
made them all merry while he was about it. In 1825, he was employed by
James Taylor as a ferry-man, to manage a boat which crossed the Ohio
and Anderson’s Creek. In addition to this he worked on the farm, acted
as hostler, ground corn, built the fires, put the water early on the
fire, and prepared for the mistress’s cooking. Though he was obliged to
rise so early, he always studied till nearly midnight. He was in great
demand when hogs were slaughtered. For this rough work he was paid 31
cents (about 16d.) a-day. Meanwhile, he became incredibly strong. He
could carry six hundred pounds with ease; he once picked up some huge
posts which four men were about to lift, and bore them away with little
effort. Men yet alive have seen him lift a full barrel of liquor and
drink from the bung-hole. “He could sink an axe,” said an old friend,
“deeper into wood than any man I ever saw.” He was especially skilled
in wrestling, and from the year 1828 there was no man, far or near, who
would compete with him in it.[10] From his boyhood, he was extremely
temperate. Those who have spoken most freely of his faults admit that,
in a country where a whiskey-jug was kept in every house, Lincoln never
touched spirits except to avoid giving offence. His stepmother thought
he was temperate to a fault.
Meanwhile, as the youth grew apace, the neighbouring village of
Gentryville had grown with him. Books and cultivated society became
more accessible. The great man of the place was a Mr. Jones, the
storekeeper, whose shop supplied all kinds of goods required by
farmers. Mr. Jones took a liking to young Lincoln, employed him
sometimes, taught him politics, giving him deep impressions in favour
of Andrew Jackson, the representative of the Democratic party, and
finally awoke Abraham’s ambition by admiring him, and predicting that
he would some day be a great man. Another friend was John Baldwin,
the village blacksmith, who was, even for a Western American wag,
wonderfully clever at a jest, and possessed of an inexhaustible fund of
stories. It was from John Baldwin that Lincoln derived a great number
of the quaint anecdotes with which he was accustomed in after years
to illustrate his arguments. His memory contained thousands of these
drolleries; so that, eventually, there was no topic of conversation
which did not “put him in mind of a little story.” In some other
respects, his acquisitions were less useful. Though he knew a vast
number of ballads, he could not sing one; and though a reader of Burns,
certain of his own satires and songs, levelled at some neighbours who
had slighted him, were mere doggerel, wanting every merit, and very
bitter. But, about 1827, he contributed an article on temperance and
another on American politics to two newspapers, published in Ohio.
From the praise awarded by a lawyer, named Pritchard, to the political
article, it would appear to have been very well written. Even in this
first essay in politics, Lincoln urged the principle by which he became
famous, and for which he died--adherence to the constitution and the
integrity of the American Union.
In March, 1828, Abraham Lincoln was hired by Mr. Gentry, the proprietor
of Gentryville, as “bow-hand,” and “to work the front oars,” on a
boat going with a cargo of bacon to New Orleans. This was a trip of
1800 miles, and then, as now, the life of an Ohio and Mississippi
boatman was full of wild adventure. One incident which befel the
future President was sufficiently strange. Having arrived at a
sugar-plantation six miles below Baton Rouge, the boat was pulled in,
and Lincoln, with his companion, a son of Mr. Gentry, went to sleep.
Hearing footsteps in the night, they sprang up, and saw that a gang
of seven negroes were coming on board to rob or murder. Seizing a
hand-spike, Lincoln rushed towards them, and as the leader jumped on
the boat, knocked him into the water. The second, third, and fourth, as
they leaped aboard, were served in the same way, and the others fled,
but were pursued by Lincoln and Gentry, who inflicted on them a severe
beating. In this encounter, Abraham received a wound the scar of which
he bore through life. It is very probable that among these negroes who
would have taken the life of the future champion of emancipation, there
were some who lived to share its benefits and weep for his death.[11]
It was during this voyage, or about this time, that two strangers paid
Abraham half a silver dollar each for rowing them ashore in a boat.
Relating this to Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, he said--“You may
think it was a very little thing, but it was a most important incident
in my life. I could scarcely believe that I, a poor boy, had earned a
dollar in less than a day. I was a more hopeful and confident being
from that time.”