ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Uniform with This Volume
GEORGE WASHINGTON
By PAUL LEICESTER FORD
"This work challenges attention for the really valuable
light which it throws upon the character of George Washington."
--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
THOMAS JEFFERSON
By WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS
"The volume is particularly worth reading because it revives
the many-sided nature and activity of a truly great man."
--_Springfield Republican.
"A most readable and entertaining volume. Jefferson will
stand higher in popular estimation because of the human touch in
the picture."
--_Brooklyn Eagle._
[Illustration: Copyright, 1891, by M. P. Rice
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
From an original, unretouched negative made in 1864]
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BY
WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS
AUTHOR OF "THOMAS JEFFERSON", "THE TURK AND HIS LOST
PROVINCES", "THE UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN
POWERS", ETC.
_WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS_
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.
--_Lowell, Commemoration Ode_
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE MAN AND HIS KINDRED 13
II.--THE LEADER OF THE SPRINGFIELD BAR 56
III.--A GREAT ORATOR AND HIS SPEECHES 86
IV.--A PRAIRIE POLITICIAN 129
V.--A PRESIDENT AND HIS CABINET 179
VI.--A COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AND HIS GENERALS 229
VII.--HOW LINCOLN APPEARED IN THE WHITE HOUSE 277
VIII.--THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SLAVES 314
IX.--A MASTER IN DIPLOMACY 342
X.--LINCOLN'S PHILOSOPHY, MORALS, AND RELIGION 370
List of Illustrations
PAGE
ABRAHAM LINCOLN _Frontispiece_
From an original, unretouched negative made in 1864,
when he commissioned Ulysses S. Grant Lieutenant-General
and commander of all the armies of the republic.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 20
This cabin was long ago torn down, but the logs were
saved, and in August, 1895, it was rebuilt on the
original site.
ROCK SPRING FARM, KENTUCKY, WHERE ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS BORN 22
From a photograph taken in September, 1895.
ROCK SPRING ON THE FARM WHERE LINCOLN WAS BORN 26
From a photograph taken in September, 1895. The spring
is in a hollow at the foot of the gentle slope on which
the house stands.
FAC-SIMILE OF AN INVITATION TO A SPRINGFIELD COTILLION
PARTY 38
By special permission, from the collection of C. F.
Gunther, Esq., Chicago.
MARY TODD LINCOLN, WIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 44
From a photograph by Brady in the War Department
Collection.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN EARLY IN 1861, WHEN HE FIRST BEGAN TO
WEAR A BEARD 60
From a photograph in the collection of H. W. Fay, Esq.,
De Kalb, Illinois. By special permission.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN THE SUMMER OF 1860 75
From a negative taken for M. C. Tuttle, of St. Paul,
Minnesota, for local use in the presidential campaign.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1858 100
From a photograph owned by Hon. William J. Franklin,
Macomb, Illinois, taken in 1866 from an ambrotype made
in 1858 at Macomb. By special permission.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1861 125
Copied from the original in the possession of Frank A.
Brown, Esq., Minneapolis, Minnesota.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S HOUSE AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS 156
The tree in front of the house was planted by Lincoln.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1861 169
From a photograph by Klauber, of Louisville, Kentucky,
taken especially for Mrs. Lucy G. Speed, in
acknowledgment of an Oxford Bible received from her
twenty years before. Reproduced by special permission
of James B. Speed, Esq., of Louisville, Kentucky.
MONTGOMERY BLAIR, POSTMASTER-GENERAL 187
From a photograph by Brady.
GIDEON WELLES, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 196
From a photograph by Brady.
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, SECRETARY OF STATE 201
From a photograph by Brady.
GENERAL GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN AT THE HEAD-QUARTERS OF
GENERAL MORELL'S BRIGADE, MINOR'S HILL, VIRGINIA 206
From a contemporary photograph by M. B. Brady.
EDWIN M. STANTON, SECRETARY OF WAR 224
From a photograph by Brady.
GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT 254
From an original, unretouched negative made in 1864,
when he was commissioned Lieutenant-General and
commander of all the armies of the republic.
GRAND REVIEW OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC BY PRESIDENT
LINCOLN AT FALMOUTH, VIRGINIA, IN APRIL, 1863 271
From a drawing by W. R. Leigh.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SON "TAD" 287
From a photograph by Brady, now in the War Department
Collection, Washington, D. C.
JOHN WILKES BOOTH 311
From a photograph by Brady.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1864 320
From a photograph in the War Department Collection.
FAC-SIMILE OF LETTER BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO HON. MICHAEL
HAHN, FIRST FREE STATE GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA 338
By special permission of John M. Crampton, Esq., New
Haven, Connecticut.
SALMON P. CHASE, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 356
From a photograph by Brady.
A Lincoln Calendar
Born February 12, 1809
Removed to Indiana 1816
Nancy Hanks Lincoln died 1817
Thomas Lincoln married Sally Bush Johnston 1819
First trip to New Orleans 1828
Removed to Illinois March, 1830
Went to New Salem March, 1831
Second trip to New Orleans April, 1831
Enters Offutt's store August, 1831
Candidate for Legislature March, 1832
Black Hawk War April, 1832
Defeated for Legislature August, 1832
Buys store with Berry 1832
Appointed Postmaster May, 1833
Appointed Surveyor November, 1833
Elected to Legislature August, 1834
Removed to Springfield April, 1837
Re-elected to Legislature 1836-1838-1840
First meets Douglas in debate December, 1839
Duel with Shields 1842
Married November 4, 1842
Partnership with Logan 1842
Defeat for Congressional nomination 1844
Elected to Congress 1846
Candidate for United States Senator 1855
Assists organization of Republican party February 22, 1856
Delegate to Philadelphia Convention June 17, 1856
Challenges Douglas to joint debate July 17, 1858
Second defeat for Senator January, 1859
Cooper Institute speech February 27, 1860
Nominated for President May 16, 1860
Elected President November 6, 1860
Leaves Springfield for Washington February 11, 1861
Arrival at Washington February 23, 1861
Inaugurated President March 4, 1861
Renominated for President June 8, 1864
Re-elected President November 8, 1864
Second inauguration March 4, 1865
Assassinated April 14, 1865
Abraham Lincoln
I
THE MAN AND HIS KINDRED
This is not a conventional biography. It is a collection of sketches in
which an attempt is made to portray the character of Abraham Lincoln
as the highest type of the American from several interesting points of
view. He has doubtless been the subject of more literary composition
than any other man of modern times, although there was nothing eccentric
or abnormal about him; there were no mysteries in his career to excite
curiosity; no controversies concerning his conduct, morals, or motives;
no doubt as to his purposes; and no difference of opinion as to his
unselfish patriotism or the success of his administration of the
government in the most trying period of its existence. Perhaps there is
no other man of prominence in American history, or in the history of the
human family, whose reputation is more firmly and clearly established.
There is certainly none more beloved and revered, whose character is so
well understood and so universally admired, and whose political, moral,
and intellectual integrity is so fully admitted by his opponents as well
as his supporters.
Of such a man, wrote a well-known writer, the last word can never
be said. Each succeeding generation may profit by the contemplation
of his strength and triumphs. His rise from obscurity to fame and
power was almost as sudden and startling as that of Napoleon, for it
may truthfully be said that when Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the
Presidency he was an unknown man. He had occupied no important position;
he had rendered no great public service; his reputation was that of a
debater and politician, and did not become national until he delivered
a remarkable speech at Cooper Union, New York. His election was not due
to personal popularity, nor to the strength of the party he represented,
nor to the justice of his cause; but to factional strife and jealousies
among his opponents. When the American people were approaching the
greatest crisis in their history, it was the hand of Providence that
turned the eyes of the loyal people of the North to this plain man of
the prairies, and his rugged figure rose before them as if he were
created for their leader.
Napoleon became dizzy; yielded to the temptations of power, betrayed
his people, grasped at empire, and fell; but the higher Lincoln rose
the more modest became his manners, the more serene his temper, the
more conspicuous his unselfishness, the purer and more patriotic his
motives. With masterful tact and force he assumed responsibilities that
made men shudder. The captain of a company of uncouth volunteers began
to organize vast armies, undertook the direction of military campaigns
and of a momentous civil war, and conducted the diplomatic relations
of a nation with skill and statesmanship that astonished his ministers
and his generals. He, an humble country lawyer and local politician,
suddenly took his place with the world's greatest statesmen, planned
and managed the legislation of Congress, proposed financial measures
that involved the wealth of the nation, and alone, in the midst of
the confusion of war and the clamor of greedy politicians and the
dissensions of his advisers, solved problems that staggered the wisest
minds of the nation. The popular story-teller of the cross-roads, the
crack debater of the New Salem Literary Club, became an orator of
immortal fame. The rail-splitter of the Sangamon became the most honored
and respected man of his generation.
Such men are not accidents. The strength of a structure depends upon
the material used and the treatment it has received. Poor material may
be improved and good material is often spoiled in the making; but only
when the pure metal has passed through the fire and the forge is it fit
to sustain a severe strain. Thus Abraham Lincoln, unconscious of his
destiny, by the struggles and privations of his early life was qualified
for the task to which Infinite Wisdom had assigned him.
Abraham Lincoln's father was descended from Samuel Lincoln, who
emigrated from the west of England a few years after the landing of the
Pilgrims and settled at the village of Hingham, on the south shore of
Massachusetts Bay, between Boston and Plymouth. Eight men bearing that
name came over on the same ship and are supposed to have been related.
An army of their descendants is scattered over the Union. One of them,
Samuel Lincoln, left a large family which has produced several prominent
figures besides a President of the United States. One of his grandsons
in the third generation, Levi Lincoln, was recognized for a generation
as the leader of the New England bar. He was Secretary of State and
Attorney-General in the Cabinet of President Jefferson, a member of the
Legislature of Massachusetts, and one of the ablest and most influential
men of his day.
The fourth son of Samuel Lincoln, Mordecai, I, acquired wealth as a
manufacturer. His eldest son, who inherited his name, moved to Berks
County, Pennsylvania, and had a son named John, who took up a tract of
land in Virginia about the year 1760, where, like the rest of his name,
he raised a large family. John Lincoln, II, his second son, became
prominent in public affairs, and was a member of the Convention that
framed the first Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania.
On July 10, 1760, Abraham, I, the third of the five sons of John
Lincoln, II, married Anna Boone, a cousin of Daniel Boone, the most
famous of American pioneers, and his father gave him a farm in the
Shenandoah Valley. By frequent intermarriages between the Boones and the
Lincolns they were closely allied. By the will of Mordecai Lincoln, II,
his "loving friend and neighbor George Boone" was made executor of his
estate and Squire Boone, father of the celebrated Daniel, was appointed
to make an inventory of the property. Hananiah Lincoln was a partner of
Daniel Boone in the purchase of a tract of land on the Missouri River in
1798, and it was there that the great woodsman died.
The name Abraham was a favorite among the Lincoln family. It occurs
frequently in their genealogy. A young man named Abraham Lincoln
distinguished himself for courage and brutality on the Confederate side
during the Civil War. He killed a Dunkard preacher whom he suspected of
furnishing information to the Union army. The Union President received
several letters of offensive tone from his kinsman in the South during
the earlier part of his administration.
The farm of Abraham Lincoln, I, in the Shenandoah Valley, was on the
great national highway along which the course of empire took its
westward way, and, infected by continual contact with the emigrants and
encouraged by the greatest of American pioneers, he sold the property
his father had given him, packed his wife and five children into a
Conestoga wagon, and followed the great migration until it led him
to what is now Hughes Station, Jefferson County, Kentucky, where he
entered a large tract of land and paid for it one hundred and sixty
pounds "in current money." The original warrant, dated March 4, 1780,
is still in existence. By the blunder of a clerk in the Land Office the
name was misspelled Linkhorn, and Abraham, I, was too careless or busy
to correct it, for it appears that way in all the subsequent records.
Hananiah Lincoln, the partner of Daniel Boone, furnished the surveyor's
certificate.
Four years later, in the spring of 1784, occurred the first tragedy
in the annals of the Lincoln family. Abraham, I, with his three sons,
were at work clearing ground upon his farm when they were attacked by
a wandering squad of Indians. The first shot from the brush killed the
father. Mordecai, III, the eldest son, started to the house for his
rifle; Josiah ran to the neighbors for assistance, leaving Thomas, a
child of six, alone with his father. After Mordecai had recovered his
rifle he saw an Indian in war-paint appear upon the scene, examine the
dead body of his father, and stoop to raise the lad from the ground.
Taking deliberate aim at a white ornament that hung from the neck of the
savage, he brought him down and his little brother escaped to the cabin.
The Indians began to appear in the thicket, but Mordecai, shooting
through the loopholes of the cabin, held them off until Josiah returned
with reinforcements.
From circumstantial evidence we must infer that Anna Lincoln was a poor
manager, or perhaps she suffered from some misfortune. All we know is
that she abandoned the farm in Jefferson County and moved south into
the neighboring county of Washington, where she disappears from human
knowledge. Her eldest son, Mordecai, III, appears to have inherited
his father's money, as the rules of primogeniture prevailed in those
days. He was sheriff of Washington County, a member of the Kentucky
Legislature, and tradition gives him the reputation of an honorable
and influential citizen. Late in life he removed to Hancock County,
Illinois, where he died and is buried. Josiah, the second son, crossed
the Ohio River and took up a homestead in what is now called Harrison
County, Indiana. Mary, the eldest daughter, married Ralph Crume, and
Nancy, the fourth child, married William Brumfield. Their descendants
are still found in Hardin, Washington, and other counties in that
neighborhood.
Explanations are wanting for the circumstance that Thomas, the youngest
son and brother of this prosperous family, whose father was slain
before his eyes when he was only six years old, was turned adrift,
without home or care, for at ten years of age we find him "a wandering,
laboring boy" who was left uneducated and supported himself by farm
work and other menial employment, and learned the trades of carpenter
and cabinet-maker. But he must have had good stuff in him, for when he
was twenty-five years old he had saved enough from his wages to buy a
farm in Hardin County. Local tradition, which, however, cannot always
be trusted, represents him to have been "an easy going man, and slow to
anger, but when 'roused a formidable adversary." He was above the medium
height, had a powerful frame, and, like his immortal son, had a wide
local reputation as a wrestler.
While learning his trade in the carpenter shop of Joseph Hanks, Thomas
Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, his own cousin, and the niece of his
employer. He probably met her at the house of Richard Berry, with whom
she lived, and must have seen a good deal of her at the home of her
uncle. At all events, the cousins became engaged; their nuptial bond was
signed according to the law on June 10, 1806, and two days later they
were married by the Rev. Jesse Head, at the home of Richard Berry, near
Beechland, Washington County, Kentucky.
Nancy Hanks was descended from William Hanks, who came to this country
in 1699 and settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Four of his five sons
moved to Amelia County, Virginia, where they had a large tract of land.
One of their descendants, Joseph Hanks, married Nancy Shipley, and in
1789 moved to Kentucky with a large party of his relatives. In 1793 he
died, leaving eight children, who were scattered among their relatives,
and Nancy, the youngest, when nine years old, found a home with her
aunt, Lucy Shipley, the wife of Richard Berry. She is represented to
have been a sweet-tempered and handsome woman, of intellect, appearance,
and character superior to her position; and could even read and write,
which was a remarkable accomplishment among the women of that day. She
taught her husband to write his name. But she had no means whatever,
being entirely dependent upon her uncle, and it is probable that she was
willing to marry even so humble a husband as Thomas Lincoln, for the
sake of securing independence and a home.
Thomas Lincoln took his wife to a little log cabin in a hamlet called
Elizabethtown, probably because he thought that it would be more
congenial for her than his lonely farm in Hardin County, which was
fourteen miles away; and perhaps he thought that he could earn a better
living by carpenter work than by farming. Here their first child, Sarah,
was born about a year after the marriage.
Thomas Lincoln either failed to earn sufficient money to meet his
household expenses or grew tired of his carpenter work, for, two years
later, he left Elizabethtown and moved his family to his farm near
Hodgensville, on the Big South Fork of Nolen Creek. It was a miserable
place, of thin, unproductive soil and only partly cleared. Its only
attraction was a fine spring of water, shaded by a little grove, which
caused it to be called "Rock Spring Farm." The cabin was of the rudest
sort, with a single room, a single window, a big fireplace, and a huge
outside chimney.
In this cabin Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and here he
spent the first four years of his childhood. It was a far reach to the
White House. Soon after his nomination for the Presidency he furnished
a brief autobiography to Mr. Hicks, an artist who was painting his
portrait, in which he said,--
"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 Hodgen'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.
"June 14, 1860."
The precise spot has since been clearly identified, and the cabin was
still standing after his death.
In 1813 the family removed to a more comfortable home on Knob Creek, six
miles from Hodgensville, where Thomas Lincoln bought a better farm of
two hundred and thirty-eight acres for one hundred and eighteen pounds
and gave his note in payment. This was Abraham Lincoln's second home,
and there he lived for four years.
We know little about his childhood, except that it was of continual
privation in a cheerless home, for Thomas Lincoln evidently found it
difficult to supply his family with food and clothing. Mr. Lincoln
seldom talked freely of those days, even to his most intimate friends,
although from remarks which he dropped from time to time they judged
that the impressions of his first years were indelible upon his
temperament and contributed to his melancholy. On one occasion, being
asked if he remembered anything about the War of 1812, he said that when
a child, returning from fishing one day, he met a soldier in the road
and, having been admonished by his mother that everybody should be good
to the soldiers, he gave him his fish.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
Thomas and Nancy Lincoln had three children. Sarah, the eldest, at the
age of fourteen married Aaron Griggsby and died in childbirth a year
later. Thomas, the third child, died when only three days old.
When Abraham was about seven years old his father became restless and
went across the river into Indiana to look for a new home. It has been
represented by some of Lincoln's biographers that the motive of his
removal was his dislike of slavery; that he wished to remove his son
from its influence; but Lincoln attributed the determination to other
reasons, particularly his father's difficulty in securing a valid
title to his land. It is quite as probable that, like other men of his
temperament, he thought he could do better in a new place; like other
rolling stones, that he could gather more moss in a new soil. He found
a purchaser for his farm who gave him in payment twenty dollars in
money and ten barrels of whiskey, which Thomas Lincoln loaded upon a
flat-boat, with his household furniture, floating it down Knob Creek to
Rolling Fork, to Salt River, to the Ohio River, and down the Ohio to
Thompson's Ferry in Perry County, Indiana. The boat upset on the way
and part of the whiskey and some of his carpenter tools were lost. He
plunged into the forest, found a location that suited him about sixteen
miles from the river, called Pigeon Creek, where he left his property
with a settler, and, as his boat could not float upstream, he sold it
and walked back to Hodgensville to get his wife and two children. He
secured a wagon and two horses, in which he carried his family and
whatever of his household effects were then remaining.
Arriving at his location, which was a piece of timber land a mile and
a half east of what is now Gentryville, Spencer County, he built a log
cabin fourteen feet square, open to the weather on one side, and without
windows or chimney. This was Abraham Lincoln's third home, and the
family lived in that rude, primitive way for more than a year, managing
to raise a patch of corn and a few vegetables during the following
summer, which, with corn meal ground at a hand grist-mill seven miles
away, were their chief food. Game, however, was abundant. The streams
were full of fish and wild fruits could be gathered in the forest. The
future President of the United States slept upon a heap of dry leaves
in a narrow loft at one end of the cabin, to which he climbed by means
of pegs driven into the wall. A year after his arrival Thomas Lincoln
entered the quarter section of land he occupied and made his first
payment under what was familiarly known as the "two-dollar-an-acre law,"
but it was eleven years before he could pay enough to obtain a patent
for half of it. He then erected a permanent home of logs which was
comparatively comfortable and was perhaps as good as those occupied by
most of his neighbors.
In the fall of 1818 the little community of pioneers was almost
exterminated by an epidemic known as "milk sickness," and among the
victims was Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who was buried with her neighbors in a
little clearing in the forest in a coffin made of green lumber, cut with
a whip-saw by her husband. There were no ceremonies at her burial, but
several months later Abraham, then ten years old, wrote to Parson David
Elkin, the itinerant Free-will Baptist preacher at Hodgensville, of his
mother's death, and begged him to come to Indiana and preach her funeral
sermon. Nancy Lincoln must have been highly esteemed or this poor parson
would not have come a hundred miles through the wilderness in answer
to this summons from her child, for several months later he appeared
according to appointment, and all the settlers for many miles around
assembled to hear him. It was the most important event that had ever
occurred in the community and was remembered longer than any other.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
ROCK SPRING FARM, KENTUCKY, WHERE ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS BORN
From a photograph taken in September, 1895. The cabin in which Lincoln
was born is seen to the right, in the background]
The death of Mrs. Lincoln left the child Sarah, then only eleven years
old, to care for the household, and, with the assistance of her brother,
she struggled through the next year until the autumn of 1819, when
their father returned to Hodgensville and married Sally Bush Johnston,
a widow with three children (John, Sarah, and Matilda), whom he had
courted before he married Nancy Hanks. She seems to have been a woman
of uncommon energy and nobility of character, and in after-life her
step-son paid her a worthy tribute when he said that the strongest
influence which stimulated and guided him in his ambition came from her
and from his own mother. Under her management conditions improved. She
brought a little property and some household goods into the family as
well as three children, stimulated her husband to industry, and taught
his children habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. There was never
any friction between her and her step-children, and her own brood, John,
Sarah, and Matilda, were received cordially and treated with affection.
Nor in their after-lives was any distinction made by either of the
parents. The step-mother recognized in Abraham a boy of unusual talent,
and encouraged and assisted him by every means within her power.
Abraham's life was spent at hard labor. He was a boy of unusual stature
and, from the time he was ten years old, did a man's work. He learned
all the tricks in the trades that a pioneer's son must know; hired out
upon the neighboring farms when there was nothing for him to do at home,
and his wages (twenty-five cents a day) were paid to his father. He
cared little for amusement, and hunting, which was the chief recreation
of young men of his age, had no attractions for him. In his brief
autobiography, which was prepared for the newspapers the day after his
nomination for the Presidency, he says,--
"A flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham,
with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through the cracks and killed
one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game."
He joined in the rude amusements and sports of the community like other
boys and enjoyed them. His quick intelligence, ready sympathy, wit,
humor, and generous disposition made him a great favorite. He was the
best talker and story-teller in the neighborhood. His tall stature and
unusual strength made him a leader in athletic sports, and his studious
habits and retentive memory gave him an advantage among his comrades, a
few of whom had a little, but the most of them no education. His less
gifted comrades recognized his ability and superiority; they learned to
accept his opinions and to respect his judgment. He became an instructor
as well as a leader, and the local traditions represent him as a sort
of intellectual phenomenon, whose wit, anecdotes, doggerel verses,
practical jokes, muscular strength, and skill made him the wonder of the
community and are a part of the early history of that section.
When he was sixteen he operated a ferry-boat at the mouth of Anderson's
Creek, transporting passengers across the Ohio River, and it was then
that he earned the first money that he could claim as his own. One
evening in the White House, while he was President, he told the story
to several members of his Cabinet, and Mr. Secretary Seward gives the
following account of it:
"I was contemplating my new flat-boat, and wondering whether I could
make it stronger or improve it in any particular, when two men came down
to the shore in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different
boats singled out mine, and asked: 'Who owns this?' I answered, somewhat
modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks
out to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was glad to have the chance
of earning something. I supposed that each of them would give me two
or three bits. The trunks were put on my flat-boat, and the passengers
seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamer.
"They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks and put them on
deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out
that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket
a silver half-dollar and threw it on the floor of my boat. I could
scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. Gentlemen, you may
think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me a
trifle; but it was the most important incident in my life. I could
scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a
day--that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed fairer
and wider before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that
time."
When he was nineteen Mr. Gentry, the most prominent man in the
neighborhood, from whom the town of Gentryville was named, and who kept
the "store," embarked in a new enterprise, and sent Abraham with his son
Allen upon a flat-boat to New Orleans with a load of bacon, corn meal,
and other provisions, paying him eight dollars a month and his passage
home on a steamboat. Thus the future President obtained his first
glimpse of the world outside the Indiana forest, and the impressions
left upon his mind by this experience were never effaced. It was the
beginning of a new life for him and the awakening of new ambitions.
"He was a hired man merely," wrote Lincoln of himself nearly thirty
years afterwards, "and he and a son of the owner, without any other
assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the 'cargo load,' as
it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the
sugar-coast, and one night they were attacked by seven negroes with
intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the mêlée, but
succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then 'cut cable,'
'weighed anchor,' and left."
The prairies of Illinois were becoming a great temptation to pioneers
in those days, and the restless disposition of Thomas Lincoln could not
be restrained; so he and several of his relatives joined the migration,
making a party of thirteen. Lincoln himself tells the story in these
words:
"March 1st, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year,
his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and
sons-in-law of his step-mother, left the old homestead in Indiana and
came to Illinois. Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams,
and Abraham drove one of the teams. They reached the county of Macon,
and stopped there some time within the same month of March. His father
and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River,
at the junction of the timber land and prairie, about ten miles westerly
from Decatur. Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and
made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke
the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it in the same year."
[Illustration: Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
ROCK SPRING ON THE FARM WHERE LINCOLN WAS BORN
From a photograph taken in September, 1895]
The sons-in-law of his step-mother referred to were Dennis Hanks and
Levi Hall, who had married Sarah and Matilda, Lincoln's step-sisters.
Hanks was a son of the Joseph Hanks with whom Thomas Lincoln learned the
carpenter's trade in Kentucky. Another son, John Hanks, was a member
of the family, and it was he who appeared at the State convention at
Decatur, May 9, 1860, bearing two weather-worn fence-rails decorated
with streamers and a banner inscribed to the effect that they were from
the identical lot of three thousand rails which Lincoln had cut on the
Sangamon River in 1830. This dramatic scene was devised by Richard J.
Oglesby, afterwards Governor and United States Senator, and one of
Lincoln's most ardent admirers and faithful supporters. Little did
Lincoln dream when he was splitting rails in the walnut woods with John
Hanks that he and his companion would appear in a drama of national
interest with samples of their handiwork to electrify the country with
enthusiasm and confer upon the long-legged farmer boy the sobriquet of
"The Illinois Rail-Splitter."
Delegates had been elected to the second National Republican Convention
to be held at Chicago a week later, when Mr. Oglesby arose and announced
in a serious and mysterious manner that an old citizen of Macon County
had something to present to the Convention. Then, with great dramatic
effect, John Hanks entered, bearing the relics which were to become the
symbols of the National Convention. The assembly was transformed into a
tumult, and Lincoln was brought to the platform, where, when order could
be restored, he said,--
"Gentlemen: I suppose you want to know something about those things.
Well, the truth is, John Hanks and I did make rails in the Sangamon
bottom. I don't know whether we made those rails or not; fact is, I
don't think they are a credit to the maker [and his awkward frame shook
with suppressed laughter]; but I know this, I made rails then and I
think I could make better ones than these now."
The rails were taken to the National Convention at Chicago and had a
prominent place at the Illinois head-quarters, where, trimmed with
flowers and lighted by tapers by enthusiastic ladies, they were the
subject of much private and newspaper attention. Later in the campaign
they were sent from place to place in the country and other rails
from the old farm were also used as campaign emblems. A Philadelphia
speculator sent to Illinois and purchased a car-load of them.
Through the remainder of the year and the following winter (1830-31)
young Lincoln was employed about his father's new home and at intervals
assisted the neighbors in farm work in company with John Hanks. When he
reached his twenty-first year he started out for himself according to
the custom of the country. He was the most promising young man in that
neighborhood. He had a better education than any of the community, his
intellectual and conversational powers were beyond all rivalry, and his
physical strength and endurance were remarkable even among the giants of
those days. He stood six feet four inches in his stockings, and could
outlift, outwork, outrun, and outwrestle every man of his acquaintance.
And his pride in his physical accomplishments was greater than in his
intellectual attainments. For a man of his natural modesty he was very
vain of his stature and strength, and was accustomed to display and
boast of them even after he became President. He retained his muscular
strength to the end of his life, although he then took very little
physical exercise. The muscles of his body were like iron. General Veile
says that he could take a heavy axe and, grasping it with his thumb and
forefinger at the extreme end of the handle, hold it out on a horizontal
line from his body. "When I was eighteen years of age I could do this,"
he said with pride, "and I have never seen the day since when I could
not do it." The attachés of the office of the Secretary of War relate
curious stories of his frequent displays of muscular strength when he
visited the War Department to read the despatches from his generals.
He frequently astonished visitors at the Executive Mansion by asking
them to measure height with him, and one day shocked Senator Sumner by
suggesting that they stand back to back to see which was the taller. A
delegation of clergymen appeared at the White House one morning bursting
with righteous indignation because slavery was still tolerated in the
rebellious States and bearing a series of fervid resolutions demanding
immediate abolition. One of the number was a very tall man, and the
President could scarcely wait until he had completed his carefully
prepared oration presenting the memorial. As soon as he had uttered the
last word, Mr. Lincoln asked eagerly,--
"Mr. Blank, how tall are you?"
The clergyman turned scarlet and looked around at his colleagues in
amazement.
"I believe I am taller than you," continued the President. "What is your
height?"
"Six feet three inches," responded the divine with evident irritation.
"Then I outmeasure you by an inch," said Mr. Lincoln with a satisfied
air, and proceeded to explain the situation as to slavery.
A similar scene occurred on another occasion when, however, the visitor
happened to be a trifle taller than the President. One of his friends
who was present says that the latter showed more irritation than he
had ever seen him exhibit before; nor did he forget it, but the next
time his friend called he referred to the matter and remarked that he
considered himself the tallest man in Washington, although he didn't
pretend to be as handsome as General Scott.
When the notification committee came from the Chicago Convention to his
home at Springfield, they were presented one after another to their
candidate, and, as Governor E. D. Morgan, of New York, reached him, he
asked his height and weight. Mr. Morgan gave the information with some
amusement, whereupon Lincoln remarked,--
"You are the heavier, but I am the taller."
In 1859, when he went to Milwaukee to deliver an address at a State
fair, a cannon-ball tosser in a sideshow interested him more than
anything else on the grounds. Lincoln insisted upon testing the weights
he handled, and was quite chagrined because he was not able to throw
them about as easily as the professional. As they parted he remarked in
his droll way,--
"You can outlift me, but I could lick salt off the top of your hat."
Thomas Lincoln did not remain long at his home on the bluffs overlooking
the Sangamon River. He was always afflicted with the fever of unrest.
Like so many of his class, he continued to advance westward, keeping on
the skirmish line of the frontier. He removed three times after he came
to Illinois in search of better luck, and never found it. He owned three
farms, but never paid for any of them, and was always growing poorer and
signing larger mortgages. Finally, when he had reached the end of his
credit, Lincoln bought him a tract of forty acres near Farmington, Coles
County, where he lived until January 17, 1851, long enough to enjoy the
satisfaction of seeing his son one of the foremost men in the State. He
was buried near the little hamlet. His wife survived both him and her
famous step-son, and was tenderly cared for as long as the latter lived.
Before starting for his inauguration he paid her a visit, in February,
1861, when they spent the day in affectionate companionship. She had a
presentiment that she should never see him again and told him so, but
neither dreamed that he would die first. She lived until April, 1869, a
pious, gentle, intelligent, and well-loved woman, and was buried beside
her husband. Robert T. Lincoln has erected a monument over their graves.
John Johnston, Lincoln's step-brother, was an honest, but uneasy and
shiftless man, and gave him a great deal of trouble. He lived with his
mother and step-father most of his life, but never contributed much
to their support, and was always in debt, although Lincoln several
times give him means to make a fresh start. Lincoln's letters to his
step-brother, several of which have been preserved, throw considerable
light upon his character.
In 1851, after Thomas Lincoln's death, Johnston proposed to leave his
mother and go to Missouri, where he thought he could do better than
in Illinois, and asked permission to sell the farm which Lincoln had
bought to secure his step-mother a home for life.
"You propose to sell it for three hundred dollars," wrote Lincoln in
his indignation, "take one hundred dollars away with you, and leave her
two hundred dollars at eight per cent, making her the enormous sum of
sixteen dollars a year. Now, if you are satisfied with seeing her in
that way I am not."
Then Johnston proposed that Lincoln should lend him eighty dollars to
pay his expenses to Missouri.
"You say you would give your place in heaven for seventy or eighty
dollars," Lincoln wrote his step-brother. "Then you value your place in
heaven very cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get
seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. What I propose
is that you shall go to work 'tooth and nail' for somebody who will
give you money for it.... I now promise you, that for every dollar you
will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor, either
in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other
dollar.... In this I do not mean that you shall go off to St. Louis, or
the lead mines in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the
best wages you can get close at home in Coles County. Now, if you will
do this, you will soon be out of debt, and, what is better, you will
have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But, if I
should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep as
ever."
A few months later Lincoln wrote Johnston again in regard to his
contemplated move to Missouri:
"What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer?
Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without
work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you? If
you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you
are; if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere.
Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do you no good. You
have raised no crop this year; and what you really want is to sell the
land, get the money, and spend it. Part with the land you have, and, my
life upon it, you will never after own a spot big enough to bury you in.
Half you will get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and
the other half you will eat, drink, and wear out, and no foot of land
will be bought. Now, I feel it my duty to have no hand in such a piece
of foolery."
Shortly after leaving his father's primitive home in the spring of 1831,
Lincoln obtained employment with Denton Offutt, a trader and speculator,
who, having heard that he had already made a voyage on a flat-boat from
Indiana to New Orleans, engaged him for a similar expedition, in company
with John D. Johnston, his step-brother, and John Hanks, his cousin,
for twelve dollars a month each with their return expenses. It took
some time to build the boat, and at the very beginning of the voyage
it stuck midway across a dam at the village of New Salem. The bow was
high in the air, the stern was low in the water, and shipwreck seemed
absolutely certain when Lincoln's ingenuity rescued the craft. Having
unloaded the cargo, he bored a hole in the bottom at the end extending
over the dam; then he tilted up the boat and let the water run out. That
being done, the boat was easily shoved over the dam and reloaded. This
novel exhibition of marine engineering so impressed the inhabitants of
the neighborhood that Abraham Lincoln's genius was discussed at every
fireside for months thereafter, and he gained a reputation at New Salem
that proved to be of great value. He was so much interested in what he
had done that twenty years later he developed the idea and applied for a
patent for a curious contrivance for lifting flat-boats over shoals.
The journey to New Orleans was a valuable experience. Lincoln's first
actual contact with the system of slavery made him an abolitionist for
life, and the impressions he received were retained throughout his
entire career. He returned to St. Louis by steamer, walked across the
country to New Salem, and became a clerk in the store of Denton Offutt,
measuring calico, weighing out sugar and nails, tending a grist-mill,
and making himself useful to his employer and popular with the people.
The following year he engaged in a mercantile adventure on his own
account at New Salem which failed disastrously, and found himself loaded
with obligations which, in humorous satire upon his own folly, he called
"the national debt." His creditors accepted his notes in settlement, and
during the next seventeen years he paid them in instalments unto the
uttermost farthing, although the terrible responsibility darkened all
the days of his life.
"That debt," he once said to a friend, "was the greatest obstacle I
have ever met in my life; I had no way of speculating, and could not
earn money except by labor, and to earn by labor eleven hundred dollars
besides my living seemed the work of a lifetime. There was, however, but
one way. I went to the creditors, and told them that if they would let
me alone I would give them all I could earn over my living, as fast as I
could earn it."
As late as 1849, when a member of Congress, so we are informed by Mr.
Herndon, he sent home money saved from his salary to be applied on these
obligations. Only a single creditor refused to accept his promises.
A man named Van Bergen, who bought one of his notes on speculation,
brought suit, obtained judgment against him, and levied upon the horse,
saddle, and instruments used by him daily in surveying, and with which,
to use his own words, he "kept body and soul together."
James Short, a well-to-do farmer living a few miles north of New Salem,
heard of the trouble which had befallen his young friend, and, without
advising Lincoln, attended the sale, bought in the horse and surveying
instruments for one hundred and twenty dollars, and turned them over to
their former owner. After Lincoln left New Salem James Short removed to
the far West, and one day thirty years later he received a letter from
Washington, containing the surprising but gratifying announcement that
he had been commissioned as Indian agent.
It was this honorable discharge of the obligations in which he became
involved through the rascality of another man that gave Lincoln the
sobriquet of "Honest Old Abe," which one of his biographers has said
"proved of greater service to himself and his country than if he had
gained the wealth of Crooesus."
It was while he was struggling along, trying to do business with his
partner Berry, that he was appointed postmaster at New Salem, which
office he continued to hold until it was discontinued in May, 1836. His
duties as postmaster, as well as his compensation, were very light,
because there were only two or three hundred patrons of the office and
their correspondence was limited. He carried their letters around in his
hat and read all of their newspapers before he delivered them.
A widely circulated story that Lincoln was once a saloon-keeper was
based upon the fact that the firm of Berry & Lincoln obtained a license
to sell liquors, which was the practice of all country storekeepers in
those days; but, as a matter of fact, the firm never had money or credit
sufficient to obtain a stock of that class of goods, and committed the
offence only by intention.
In the great debate in 1858, Douglas, in a patronizing manner and
a spirit of badinage, spoke of having known Lincoln when he was a
"flourishing grocery-keeper" at New Salem. Lincoln retorted that he had
never been a "flourishing" grocery-keeper; but added that, if he had
been, it was certain that his friend, Judge Douglas, would have been his
best customer.