The raft over the New Salem dam, the party went on to New Orleans
without trouble, reaching there in May, 1831, and remaining a month.
It must have been a month of intense intellectual activity for
Lincoln. New Orleans was entering then on her "flush times." Commerce
was increasing at a rate which dazzled merchants and speculators, and
drew them in shoals from all over the United States. From 1830 to 1840
no other American city increased in such a ratio; exports and imports,
which in 1831 amounted to $26,000,000, in 1835 had more than doubled.
The Creole population had held the sway so far in the city; but now it
came into competition and often into contest with a pushing,
ambitious, and frequently unscrupulous native American party. To these
two predominating elements were added Germans, French, Spanish,
negroes and Indians. Cosmopolitan in its make-up, the city was even
more cosmopolitan in its life. Everything was to be seen in New
Orleans in those days, from the idle luxury of the wealthy Creole to
the organization of filibustering juntas. The pirates still plied
their trade in the Gulf, and the Mississippi River brought down
hundreds of river boatmen--one of the wildest, wickedest sets of men
that ever existed in any city.
Lincoln and his companions probably tied their boat up beside
thousands of others. It was the custom then to tie up such craft along
the river front where St. Mary's Market now stands, and one could walk
a mile, it is said, over the tops of these boats without going ashore.
No doubt Lincoln went, too, to live in the boatmen's rendezvous,
called the "Swamp," a wild, rough quarter, where roulette, whiskey,
and the flint-lock pistol ruled.
All of the picturesque life, the violent contrasts of the city, he
would see as he wandered about; and he would carry away the sharp
impressions which are produced when mind and heart are alert, sincere,
and healthy.
In this month spent in New Orleans Lincoln must have seen much of
slavery. At that time the city was full of slaves, and the number was
constantly increasing; indeed, one-third of the New Orleans increase
in population between 1830 and 1840 was in negroes. One of the saddest
features of the institution was to be seen there in its most
aggravated form--the slave market. The great mass of slave-holders of
the South, who looked on the institution as patriarchal, and who
guarded their slaves with conscientious care, knew little, it should
be said, of this terrible traffic. Their transfer of slaves was
humane, but in the open markets of the city it was attended by
shocking cruelty and degradation. Lincoln witnessed in New Orleans for
the first time the revolting sight of men and women sold like animals
Mr. Herndon says that he often heard Mr. Lincoln refer to this
experience: "In New Orleans for the first time," he writes, "Lincoln
beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw 'negroes in
chains--whipped and scourged.' Against this inhumanity his sense of
right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened
to a realization of what he had often heard and read. No doubt, as one
of his companions has said, 'slavery ran the iron into him then and
there.' One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a
slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She
underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they
pinched her flesh, and made her trot up and down the room like a
horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said,
that 'bidders might satisfy themselves' whether the article they were
offering to buy was sound or not. The whole thing was so revolting
that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of
'unconquerable hate.' Bidding his companions follow him, he said,
'Boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that
thing' (meaning slavery), 'I'll hit it hard.'"
Mr. Herndon gives John Hanks as his authority for this statement. But
this is plainly an error, for, according to Mr. Lincoln himself,
Hanks did not go on to New Orleans, but having a family and being
likely to be detained from home longer than at first expected, turned
back at St. Louis. Though there is reason for believing that Lincoln
was deeply impressed on this trip by something he saw in a New Orleans
slave market, and that he often referred to it, the story told above
probably grew to its present proportions by much telling.[A]
[Footnote A: "No doubt the young Kentuckian was disgusted [with what
he saw in the New Orleans slave auction]; but there is no proof that
this was his first object lesson in human slavery, or that, as so
often has been asserted, he turned to his companion and said, 'If I
ever get a chance to hit slavery, I will hit it hard.' Such an
expression from a flatboat-man would have been absurd."--_Personal
Reminiscences of 1840-1890, by L.E. Chittenden._]
[Illustration: MENTOR GRAHAM.
Mentor Graham was the New Salem school-master. He it was who assisted
Lincoln in mastering Kirkham's grammar, and later gave him valuable
assistance when Lincoln was learning the theory of surveying. He
taught in a little log school-house on a hill south of the village,
just across Green's Rocky Branch. Among his pupils was Ann Rutledge,
and the school was often visited by Lincoln. In 1845, Mentor Graham
was defendant in a lawsuit in which Lincoln and Herndon were attorneys
for the plaintiff, Nancy Green. It appears from the declaration,
written by Lincoln's own hand, that on October 28, 1844, Mentor Graham
gave his note to Nancy Green for one hundred dollars, with John Owens
and Andrew Beerup as sureties, payable twelve months after date. The
note not being paid when due, suit was brought. That Lincoln, even as
an attorney, should sue Mentor Graham may seem strange; but it is no
surprise when it is explained that the plaintiff was the widow of
Bowling Green--the woman who, with her husband, had comforted Lincoln
in an hour of grief. Justice, too, in this case, was clearly on her
side. The lawsuit seems never to have disturbed the friendly relations
between Lincoln and Mentor Graham. The latter's admiration for the
former was unbounded to the day of his death. Mentor Graham lived on
his farm near the ruins of New Salem until 1860, when he removed to
Petersburg. There he lived until 1885, when he removed to Greenview,
Illinois. Later he went to South Dakota, where he died about 1892, at
the ripe old age of ninety-odd years.]