While the celebrated artist, Hicks, was engaged in painting Mr.
Lincoln’s portrait, just after the former’s first nomination for the
Presidency, he asked the great statesman if he could point out the
precise spot where he was born.
Lincoln thought the matter over for a day or two, and then gave the
artist the following memorandum:
“Springfield, Ill., June 14, 1860
“I was born February 12, 1809, in then Hardin county, Kentucky, at a
point within the now county of Larue, a mile or a mile and a half from
where Rodgen’s mill now is. My parents being dead, and my own memory not
serving, I know no means of identifying the precise locality. It was on
Nolen Creek.
“A. LINCOLN.”
“SAMBO” WAS “AFEARED.”
In his message to Congress in December, 1864, just after his
re-election, President Lincoln, in his message of December 6th, let
himself out, in plain, unmistakable terms, to the effect that the
freedmen should never be placed in bondage again. “Frank Leslie’s
Illustrated Newspaper” of December 24th, 1864, printed the cartoon we
herewith reproduce, the text underneath running in this way:
UNCLE ABE: “Sambo, you are not handsome, any more than myself, but as
to sending you back to your old master, I’m not the man to do it--and,
what’s more, I won’t.” (Vice President’s message.)
Congress, at the previous sitting, had neglected to pass the resolution
for the Constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery, but, on the 31st
of January, 1865, the resolution was finally adopted, and the United
States Constitution soon had the new feature as one of its clauses, the
necessary number of State Legislatures approving it. President Lincoln
regarded the passage of this resolution by Congress as most important,
as the amendment, in his mind, covered whatever defects a rigid
construction of the Constitution might find in his Emancipation
Proclamation.
After the latter was issued, negroes were allowed to enlist in the Army,
and they fought well and bravely. After the War, in the reorganization
of the Regular Army, four regiments of colored men were provided
for--the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth
Infantry. In the cartoon, Sambo has evidently been asking “Uncle Abe” as
to the probability or possibility of his being again enslaved.