The party settled some ten miles west of Decatur, in Macon County.
Here John Hanks had the logs already cut for their new home, and
Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, and Hall soon had a cabin erected. Mr. Lincoln
himself (though writing in the third person) says: "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 the same year. These are, or are supposed to
be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these
are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham."[A]
[Illustration: MODEL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEVICE FOR LIFTING VESSELS
OVER SHOALS.
The inscription above this model, which is shown to all visitors to
the Model Hall of the Patent Office, reads: "6469 Abraham Lincoln,
Springfield, Ill. Improvement in method of lifting vessels over
shoals. Patented May 22, 1849." The apparatus consists of a bellows,
placed in each side of the hull of the craft, just below the
water-line, and worked by an odd but simple system of ropes and
pulleys. When the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or
obstruction, the bellows is filled with air; and, thus buoyed up, the
vessel is expected to float over the shoal. The model is about
eighteen or twenty inches long, and looks as if it had been whittled
with a knife out of a shingle and a cigar box. There is no elaboration
in the apparatus beyond that necessary to show the operation of
buoying the vessel over the obstructions.]
If they were far from being his "first and only rails," they certainly
were the most famous ones he or anybody else ever split. This was the
last work he did for his father, for in the summer of that year (1830)
he exercised the right of majority and started out to shift for
himself. When he left his home to start life for himself, he went
empty-handed. He was already some months over twenty-one years of
age, but he had nothing in the world, not even a suit of respectable
clothes; and one of the first pieces of work he did was "to split four
hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut
bark that would be necessary to make him a pair of trousers." He had
no trade, no profession, no spot of land, no patron, no influence. Two
things recommended him to his neighbors--he was strong, and he was a
good fellow.
[Footnote A: Short autobiography written in 1860 for use in preparing
a campaign biography. "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by
John G. Nicolay and John Hay. The Century Co. Volume I., page 639.]
[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1857.
From a photograph loaned by H.W. Fay of De Kalb, Illinois. The
original was taken early in 1857 by Alex. Hesler of Chicago. Mr. Fay
writes of the picture: "I have a letter from Mr. Hesler stating that
one of the lawyers came in and made arrangements for the sitting so
that the members of the bar could get prints. Lincoln said at the time
that he did not know why the boys wanted such a homely face." Mr.
Joseph Medill of Chicago went with Mr. Lincoln to have the picture
taken. He says that the photographer insisted on smoothing down
Lincoln's hair, but Lincoln did not like the result, and ran his
fingers through it before sitting. The original negative was burned in
the Chicago fire.]
His strength made him a valuable laborer. Not that he was fond of hard
labor. Mrs. Crawford says: "Abe was no hand to pitch into work like
killing snakes;" but when he did work, it was with an ease and
effectiveness which compensated his employer for the time he spent in
practical jokes and extemporaneous speeches. He would lift as much as
three ordinary men, and "My, how he would chop!" says Dennis Hanks.
"His axe would flash and bite into a sugar-tree or sycamore, and down
it would come. If you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin', you would
say there was three men at work by the way the trees fell." Standing
six feet four, he could out-lift, out-work, and out-wrestle any man he
came in contact with. Friends and employers were proud of his
strength, and boasted of it, never failing to pit him against any hero
whose strength they heard vaunted. He himself was proud of it, and
throughout his life was fond of comparing himself with tall and strong
men. When the committee called on him in Springfield, in 1860, to
notify him of his nomination as President, Governor Morgan of New York
was of the number, a man of great height and brawn. "Pray, Governor,
how tall may you be?" was Mr. Lincoln's first question. There is a
story told of a poor man seeking a favor from him once at the White
House. He was overpowered by the idea that he was in the presence of
the President, and, his errand done, was edging shyly out, when Mr.
Lincoln stopped him, insisting that he _measure_ with him. The man was
the taller, as Mr. Lincoln had thought; and he went away evidently
more abashed at the idea that he dared be taller than the President of
the United States than that he had dared to venture into his presence.
[Illustration: NEW SALEM.
From a painting in the State Capitol, Springfield, Illinois. New
Salem, which is described in the body of this article, was founded by
James Rutledge and John Cameron in 1829. In that year they built a dam
across the Sangamon River, and erected a mill. Under date of October
23, 1829, Reuben Harrison, surveyor, certifies that "at the request of
John Cameron one of the proprietors I did survey the town of New
Salem." The town within two years contained a dozen or fifteen houses,
nearly all of them built of logs. New Salem's population probably
never exceeded a hundred persons. Its inhabitants, and those of the
surrounding country were mostly Southerners--natives of Kentucky and
Tennessee--though there was an occasional Yankee among them. Soon
after Lincoln left the place, in the spring of 1837, it began to
decline. Petersburg had sprung up two miles down the river, and
rapidly absorbed its population and business. By 1840 New Salem was
almost deserted. The Rutledge tavern the first house erected, was the
last to succumb. It stood for many years, but at last crumbled away.
Salem hill is now only a green cow pasture.--_Note prepared by J.
McCan Davis._]
Governor Hoyt tells an excellent story illustrating Lincoln's interest
in muscle and his involuntary comparison of himself with any man who
showed great strength. It was in 1859, after Lincoln had delivered a
speech at the State Agricultural Fair of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The
two men were making the rounds of the exhibits, and went into a tent
to see a "strong man" perform. He went through the ordinary exercises
with huge iron balls, tossing them in the air and catching them, and
rolling them on his arms and back; and Mr. Lincoln, who evidently had
never before seen such a thing, watched him with intense interest,
ejaculating under his breath every now and then, "By George! By
George!" When the performance was over, Governor Hoyt, seeing Mr.
Lincoln's interest, asked him to go up and be introduced to the
athlete. He did so; and, as he stood looking down musingly on the
fellow, who was very short, and evidently wondering that a man so much
shorter than he could be so much stronger, he suddenly broke out with
one of his quaint speeches. "Why," he said, "why, I could lick salt
off the top of your hat."
[Illustration: THE NEW SALEM MILL TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
The Rutledge and Cameron mill, of which Lincoln at one time had
charge, stood on the same spot as the mill in the picture, and had the
same foundation. From the map on page 18 it will be seen that the mill
was below the bluff and east of the town.]
His strength won him popularity, but his good-nature, his wit, his
skill in debate, his stories, were still more efficient in gaining him
good-will. People liked to have him around, and voted him a good
fellow to work with. Yet such were the conditions of his life at this
time that, in spite of his popularity, nothing was open to him but
hard manual labor. To take the first "job" which he happened
upon--rail-splitting, ploughing, lumbering, boating, store-keeping--and
make the most of it, thankful if thereby he earned his bed and board
and yearly suit of jeans, was apparently all there was before Abraham
Lincoln in 1830 when he started out for himself.