Abraham Lincoln, a history

Front matter

A HISTORY

BY JOHN G. NIOOLAT AND JOHN HAY

VOLUME ONE

Table Of Contents

Chaptek Y. Lincoln in the Black Hawk Wae

Black Hawk. The Call for Volunteers. Lincoln Elected Captain. Stillman's Run. Lincoln Reenlists. The Spy Battalion. Black Hawk's Defeat. Disbandment of the Volunteers 87

Chapter YI. Surveyor and Representative

Chapter I

IN the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln, a member of char l a respectable and well-to-do family in Eocking- itso. ham County, Virginia, started westward to establish himself in the newly-explored country of Kentucky. He entered several large tracts of fertile land, and returning to Virginia disposed of his property there, and with his wife and five children went back to Kentucky and settled in Jefferson County. Little is known of this pioneer Lincoln or of his father. Most of the records belonging to that branch of the family were destroyed in the civil war. Their early orphanage, the wild and illiterate life they led on the frontier, severed their connection with their kindred in the East. This often happened; there are hundreds of families in the West bearing historic names and probably descended from well-known houses in the older States or in England, which, by passing through one or two generations of ancestors who could not read or write, have lost their continuity with the past as effectually as if a deluge had intervened Vol. I.— 1

Chap. I

between the last century and this. Even the patronymic has been frequently distorted beyond recognition by slovenly pronunciation during the years when letters were a lost art, and by the phonetic spelling of the first boy in the family who learned the use of the pen. There are Lincolns in Kentucky and Tennessee belonging to the same stock with the President, whose names are spelled " Linkhorn" and "Linkhern." All that was known of the emigrant, Abraham Lincoln, by his immediate descendants was that his progenitors, who were Quakers, came from Berks County, Pennsylvania, into Virginia, and there throve and prospered.^ But we now know, with sufacient clearness, through the wide-spread and searching luster which surrounds the name, the history of the migrations of the family since its arrival on this continent, and the circumstances under which the Virginia pioneer started for Kentucky.

The first ancestor of the line of whom we have knowledge was Samuel Lincoln, of Norwich, England, who came to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638, and died there. He left a son, Mordecai, whose son, of the same name,— and it is a name which persists in every branch of the family,^— removed to Monmouth, New Jersey, and thence to Amity township,

1 We desire to express our obli- arisen in the attempt to trace gations to Edwin Salter, Samuel their genealogy. For instance, L. Smedley, Samuel Shaekford, Abraham Lincoln of Chester Samuel W. Pennypacker, How- County, son of one Mordecai and ard M. Jenkins, and John T. brother of another, the President s Harris Jr., for information and ancestors, left a fair estate, by suggestions which have been of will, to his children, whose names use to us in this chapter. were John Abraham, Isaac

2 The Lincolns, in naming their Jacob, Mordecai, Eebecca, and children, followed so strict a tra- Sarah-precisely the same names dition that great confusion has we find in three collateral famihes.

now a part of Berks County, Pennsylvania, where chap. i. he died in 1735, fifty years old. From a copy of his will, recorded in the office of the Eegister in Philadelphia, we gather that he was a man of considerable property. In the inventory of his effects, made after his death, he is styled by the appraisers, " Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman." His son John received by his father's will " a certain piece of land lying in the Jerseys, containing three hundred acres," the other sons and daughters having been liberally provided for from the Pennsylvania property. This John Lincoln left New Jersey some years later, and about 1750 established himself in Eockingham County, mo. Virginia. He had five sons, to whom he gave the names which were traditional in the family : Abraham,— the pioneer first mentioned, — Isaac, Jacob, Thomas, and John. Jacob and John remained in Virginia ; the former was a soldier in the War of the Eevolution, and took part as lieutenant in a Virginia regiment at the siege of Yorktown. Isaac went to a place on the Holston Eiver in Tennessee ; Thomas followed his brother to Kentucky, lived and died there, and his children then emigrated to Tennessee.^ With the one memorable exception the family seem to have been modest, thrifty, unambitious people. Even the great fame and conspicuousness of the President did not tempt them out of their retirement. Eobert Lincoln, of Hancock County, Illinois, a cousin-german, became a captain and commissary of volunteers ; none of the others,

1 It is an interesting coinci- tive of the President, performed,

dence, for the knowledge of which on the 17th of May, 1837, the

we are indebted to Colonel John marriage ceremony of Andrew

B. Brownlow,. that a minister Johnson, Mr. Lincoln's sucees-

named Mordecai Lincoln, a rela- sor in the Presidency.

SO far as we know, ever made their existence known to their powerful kinsman during the years of his glory.^

It was many years after the death of the President that his son learned the probable circumstances under which the pioneer Lincoln removed to the West, and the intimate relations which subsisted between his family and the most celebrated man in early Western annals. There is little doubt that it was on account of his association with the famous Daniel Boone that Abraham Lincoln went to Kentucky. The families had for a century been closely allied. There were frequent intermarriages^ among them— both being of Quaker lineage. By the will of Mordecai Lincoln, to which reference has been made, his "loving friend and neighbor"

1 Soon after Mr. Lincoln arrived ''I am, sir, with every consid-

in Washington in 1861, he re- eration, yours respectfully,

ceived the following letter from ''Minor Lincoln,

one of his Virginia kinsmen, the ''Of the Staunton stock of Lin-

last communication which ever coins."

came from them. It was written There was a young Abraham

on paper adorned with a portrait Lincoln on the Confederate side

of Jefferson Davis, and was in- in the Shenandoah distinguished

closed in an envelope emblazoned for his courage and ferocity. He

with the Confederate flag : lay in wait and shot a Dunkard

"To Abraham Lincoln, Esq., preacher, whom he suspected of

President of the Northern Con- furnishing information to the

federacy. Union army. (Letter from Samuel

" Sir : Having just returned W. Pennypacker.)

from a trip through Virginia, 2Aletter from David J. Lincoln,

North Carolina, and Tennessee, ofBirdsboro, Berks County, Penn-

permit me to inform you that you sylvania, to the writers, says. My

will get whipped out of your boots, grandfather, Abraham Lincoln,

To-day I met a gentleman from was married to Anna Boone, a

Anna, niinois, and although he first cousin of Daniel Boone, July

voted for you he says that the 10, 1760." He was half-brother

moment your troops leave Cairo of John Lincoln, and afterwards

they will get the spots knocked became a man of some prominence

out of them. My dear sir, these in Pennsylvania, serving m the

are facts which time will prove to Constitutional Convention m

be correct. 1789-90.

G-eorge Boone was made a trustee to assist liis chap, l widow in the care of the property. Squire Boone, the father of Daniel, was one of the appraisers who made the inventory of Mordecai Lincoln's estate. The intercourse between the families was kept up after the Boones had removed to North Carolina and J ohn Lincoln had gone to Virginia. Abraham Lincoln, son of John, and grandfather of the President, was married to Miss Mary Shipley ^ in North Carolina. The inducement which led him to leave Virginia, where his standing and his fortune were assured, was, in all probability, his intimate family relations with the great explorer, the hero of the new country of Kentucky, the land of fabulous richness and unlimited adventure. At a time when the Eastern States were ringing with the fame of the mighty hunter who was then in the prime of his manhood, and in the midst of those achievements which will forever render him one of the

1 In giving to the wife of the Augusta County" says he married

pioneer Lincoln the name of Mary Elizabeth Winter, a cousin of

Shipley we follow the tradition Daniel Boone. The Boone and

in his family. The Hon. J. L. Lincoln families were large and

Nail, of Missouri, grandson of there were frequent intermar-

Nancy (Lincoln) Brumfield, Abra- riages among them, and the patri-

ham Lincoln's youngest child, has archal name of Abraham was a

given us so clear a statement of favorite one. There was still

the case that we cannot hesitate another Lincoln, Hannaniah by

to accept it, although it conflicts name, who was also intimately as-

with equally positive statements sociated with the Boones. Hissig-

from other sources. The late nature appears on the surveyor's

Gideon Welles, Secretary of the certificate for Abraham Lincoln's

Navy, who gave much intelligent land in Jefferson County, and he

effort to genealogical researches, joined Daniel Boone in 1798 in

was convinced that the Abraham the purchase of the tract of land

Lincoln who married Miss Han- on the Missouri Eiver where

nah Winters, a daughter of Boone died. (Letter from Eich-

Ann Boone, sister of the famous ard V. B. Lincoln, printed in the

Daniel, was the President's grand- ' ' Williamsport [Pa.] Banner,"

father. Waddell's "Annals of Feb, 25; 1881.)

CHAP. I. most picturesque heroes in all our annals, it is not to be wondered at that his own circle of friends should have caught the general enthusiasm and felt the desire to emulate his career.

Boone's exploration of Kentucky had begun some ten years before Lincoln set out to follow his trail. In 1769 he made his memorable journey to that virgin wilderness of whose beauty he always loved to speak even to his latest breath. During all that year he hunted, finding everywhere abundance of game. " The buffalo," Boone says, "were more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on these extensive plains, fearless because ignorant of the violence of man. Sometimes we saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing." In the course of the winter, however, he was captured by the Indians while hunting with a comrade, and when they had contrived to escape they never found again any trace of the rest of their party. But a few days later they saw two men approaching and hailed them with the hunter's caution, " Hullo, strangers ; who are you 1 " They replied, " White men and friends." They proved to be Squire Boone and another adventurer from North Carolina. The younger Boone had made that long pilgrimage through the trackless woods, led by an instinct of doglike affection, to find his elder brother and share his sylvan pleasures and dangers. Their two companions were soon waylaid and killed, and the Boones spent their long winter in that mighty solitude undisturbed. In the spring their ammunition, which was to them the only necessary of life, ran low, and one of them must return to the settle- chap. i. ments to replenish the stock. It need not be said which assumed this duty ; the cadet went uncomplaining on his way, and Daniel spent three months in absolute loneliness, as he himself expressed it, " by myself, without bread, salt, or sugar, without company of my fellow-creatures, or even a horse or dog." He was not insensible to the dangers of his situation. He never approached his camp without the utmost precaution, and always slept in the canebrakes if the signs were unfavorable. But he makes in his memoirs this curious reflection, which would seem like affectation in one less perfectly and simply heroic : " How unhappy such a situation for a man tormented with fear, which is vain if no danger comes, and if it does, only augments the pain. It was my happiness to be destitute of this afflicting passion, with which I had the greatest reason to be afflicted." After his brother's return, for a year longer they hunted in those lovely wilds, and then returned to the Yadkin to bring their families to the new domain. They made the long journey back, fi.ve hundred miles, in peace and safety.

For some time after this Boone took no conspicuous part in the settlement of Kentucky. The expedition with which he left the Yadkin in 1773 met with a terrible disaster near Cumberland Grap, in which his eldest son and five more young men were killed by Indians, and the whole party, discouraged by the blow, retired to the safer region of Clinch River. In the mean time the dauntless speculator Eichard Henderson had begun his occupation with all the pomp of viceroyalty. Harrodsburg had been founded, and corn planted, and a flourishing

Chap. I. colony established at the Falls of the Ohio. In 1774 Boone was called upon by the Grovernor of Virginia to escort a party of surveyors through Kentucky, and on his return was given the command of three garrisons; and for several years thereafter the history of the State is the record of his feats of arms. No one ever equaled him in his knowledge of Indian character, and his influence with the savages was a mystery to him and to themselves. Three times he fell into their hands and they did not harm him. Twice they adopted him into their tribes while they were still on the war-path. Once they took him to Detroit,^ to show the Long-Knife chieftains of King Greorge that they also could exhibit trophies of memorable prowess, but they refused to give him up even to their British allies. In no quality of wise woodcraft was he wanting. He could outrun a dog or a deer ; he could thread the woods without food day and night; he could find his way as easily as the panther could. Although a great athlete and a tireless warrior, he hated fighting and only fought for peace. In council and in war he was equally valuable. His advice was never rejected without disaster, nor followed but with advantage ; and when the fighting once began there was not a rifle in Kentucky which could rival his. At the nine days' siege of Boonesboro' he took deliberate aim and killed a negro renegade who was harassing the garrison from a tree five hundred and twenty-five feet away, and whose head only was visible from the fort. The mildest and the quietest of men, he had killed dozens of enemies

1 Silas Farmer, historiograplier on the lOth of March, 1778, of Detroit, informs us that Dan- and that he remained there a iel Boone was brought there month.

with his own hand, and all this without malice and, chap. i. strangest of all, without incurring the hatred of his adversaries. He had self-respect enough, but not a spark of vanity. After the fatal battle of the Blue Licks, — where the only point of light in the day's terrible work was the wisdom and valor with which he had partly retrieved a disaster he foresaw but was powerless to prevent, — when it became his duty, as senior surviving officer of the forces, to report the affair to Grovernor Harrison, his dry and naked narrative gives not a single hint of what he had done himself, nor mentions the gallant son lying dead on the field, nor the wounded brother whose gallantry might justly have claimed some notice. He was thinking solely of the public good, saying, "I have encouraged the people in this country all that I could, but I can no longer justify them or myself to risk our lives here under such extraordinary hazards." He therefore begged his Excellency to take immediate measures for relief. During the short existence of Henderson's legislature he was a member of it, and not the least useful one. Among his measures was one for the protection of game.

Everything we know of the emigrant Abraham Lincoln goes to show that it was under the auspices of this most famous of our pioneers that he set out from Eockingham County to make a home for himself and his young family in that wild region which Boone was wresting from its savage holders. He was not without means of his own. He took with him funds enough to enter an amount of land which would have made his family rich if they had retained it. The county records show him to have

LAND WARRANT ISSUED TO ABRAHAM LINKHORN (LINCOLN).

The original, of wMcli this is a reduced fac-simile, is in the possession of Colonel

K. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky.

been the possessor of a domain of some seventeen chap. i. hundred acres. There is still in existence-^ the original warrant, dated March 4, 1780, for four hundred acres of land, for which the pioneer had paid '4nto the publick Treasury one hundred and sixty pounds current money," and a copy of the jefferson surveyor's certificate, giving the metes and bounds Records, of the property on Floyd's Fork, which remained for many years in the hands of Mordecai Lincoln, the pioneer's eldest son and heir. The name was misspelled Linkhorn " by a blunder of the clerk in the land-office, and the error was perpetuated in the subsequent record.

Kentucky had been for many years the country of romance and fable for Virginians. Twenty years before Grovernor Spotswood had crossed the Alleghanies and returned to establish in a Williamsburg tavern that fantastic order of nobility

1 In the possession of Colonel 2. Eight hundred acres on

Reuben T. Durrett, of Louisville, Green River, near Green River <

a gentleman who has made the Lick, entered June 7, 1780,

early history of his State a sub- and surveyed October 12,

ject of careful study, and to 1784.

whom we are greatly indebted 3. Five hundred acres in Campfor information in regard to the bell County, date of entry not settlement of the Lincolns in known, but surveyed September Kentucky. He gives the follow- 27, 1798, and patented June ing list of lands in that State 30, 1799 — the survey and owned by Abraham Lincoln : patent evidently following his 1. Four hundred acres on Long entry after his death. It is pos- Run, a branch of Floyd's Fork, in sible that this was the five-hun- J efferson County, entered May dred-acre tract found in Boone's 29, 1780, and surveyed May 7, field-book, in the possession of 1785. We have in our posses- Lyman C. Draper, Esq., Secresion the original patent issued by tary of the Wisconsin Historical Governor Garrard, of Kentucky, Society, and erroneously supto Abraham Lincoln for this prop- posed by some to have been in erty. It was found by Col. A. C. Mercer County. Boone was a Matthews, of the 99th Illinois, deputy of Colonel Thomas Marin 1863, at an abandoned resi- shall, Surveyor of Fayette dence near Indianola, Texas. County.

Chap. I.

which he called the Knights of The Oolden Horseshoe,^ and, with a worldly wisdom which was scarcely consistent with these medieval a:ffectations, to press upon the attention of the British Government the building of a line of frontier forts to guard the Ohio Eiver from the French.

Many years after him the greatest of all Virginians crossed the mountains again, and became heavily interested in those schemes of emigration which filled the minds of many of the leading men in America until they were driven out by graver cares and more imperative duties. Washington had acquired claims and patents to the amount of thirty or forty thousand acres of land in the West ;

1 Their motto was

Benjamin Franklin and the Lees were also large chap, l owners of these speculative titles. They formed, it is true, rather an airy and unsubstantial sort of possession, the same ground being often claimed by a dozen different persons or companies under various grants from the crown or from legislatures, or through purchase by adventurers from Indian councils. But about the time of which we are speaking the spirit of emigration had reached the lower strata of colonial society, and a steady stream of pioneers began pouring over the passes of the mountains into the green and fertile valleys of Kentucky and Tennessee. Thev selected their homes in the most eligible spots to which chance or the report of earlier explorers directed them, with little knowledge or care as to the rightful ownership of the land, and too often cleared their corner of the wilderness for the benefit of others. Even Boone, to whose courage, forest lore, and singular intuitions of savage character the State of Kentucky owed more than to any other man, was deprived in his old age of his hard-earned homestead through his ignorance of legal forms, and removed to Missouri to repeat in that new territory his labors and his misfortunes.

The period at which Lincoln came West was one mo of note in the history of Kentucky. The labors of Henderson and the Transylvania Company had begun to bear fruit in extensive plantations and a connected system of forts. The land laws of Kentucky had reduced to something like order the chaos of conflicting claims arising from the various grants and the different preemption customs under which settlers occupied their property. The victory of Boone at Boonesboro' against the Shawnees, and chap. i. the capture of Kaskaskia and Yincennes by the brilliant audacity of George Eogers Clark, had brought the region prominently to the attention of the Atlantic States, and had turned in that direction the restless and roving spirits which are always found in communities at periods when great emigrations are a need of civilization. Up to this time few persons had crossed the mountains except hunters, trappers, and explorers — men who came merely to kill game, and possibly Indians, or to spy out the fertility of the land for the purpose of speculation. But in 1780 and 1781 a large number of families took up their line of march, and in the latter year a considerable contingent of women joined the little army of pioneers, impelled by an instinct which they themselves probably but half comprehended. The country was to be peopled, and there was no other way of peopling it but by the sacrifice of many lives and fortunes ; and the history of every country shows that these are never lacking when they are wanted. The number of those who came at about the same time with the pioneer Lincoln was sufficient to lay the basis of a sort of social order. Early in the year 1780 three hundred "large family boats" arrived at the Falls of the Ohio, where the land had been surveyed by Captain Bullitt seven years before, and in May the Legislature of Virginia passed a law for the incorporation of the town of Louisville, then containing some six hundred inhabitants. At the same session a law was passed confiscating the property of certain British subjects for the endowment of an institution of learning in Kentucky, " it being the interest

CHAP. I. of this commonwealth," to quote the language of the philosophic Legislature, " always to encourage and promote every design which may tend to the improvement of the mind and the diffusion of useful knowledge even among its remote citizens, whose situation in a barbarous neighborhood and a savage intercourse ^might otherwise render them unfriendly to science." This was the origin of the Transylvania University of Lexington, which rose and flourished for many years on the utmost verge of civilization.

The " barbarous neighborhood" and the " savage intercourse " undoubtedly had their effect upon the manners and morals of the settlers ; but we should fall into error if we took it for granted that the pioneers were all of one piece. The ruling motive which led most of them to the wilds was that Anglo- Saxon lust of land which seems inseparable from the race. The prospect of possessing a fourhundred-acre farm by merely occupying it, and the privilege of exchanging a basketful of almost worthless continental currency for an unlimited estate at the nominal value of forty cents per acre, were irresistible to thousands of land-loving Virginians and Carolinians whose ambition of proprietorship was larger than their means. Accompanying this flood of emigrants of good faith was the usual froth and scum of shiftless idlers and adventurers, who were either drifting with a current they were too worthless to withstand, or in pursuit of dishonest gains in fresher and simpler regions. The vices and virtues of the pioneers were such as proceeded from their environment. They were careless of human Ufe because life was worth comparatively little in that hard struggle for existence ; but they chap. i. had a remarkably clear idea of the value of property, and visited theft not only with condign punishment, but also with the severest social proscription. Stealing a horse was punished more swiftly and with more feeling than homicide. A man might be replaced more easily than the other animal. Sloth was the worst of weaknesses. An habitual drunkard was more welcome at ^'raisings " and "log-rollings" than a known faineant The man who did not do a man's share where work was to be done was christened " Lazy Lawrence," and that was the end of him socially. Cowardice was punished by inexorable disgrace. The point of honor was as strictly observed as it ever has been in the idlest and most artificial society. If a man accused another of falsehood, the ordeal by fisticuffs was instantly resorted to. Weapons were rarely employed in these chivalrous encounters, being kept for more serious use with Indians and wild beasts ; nevertheless fists, teeth, and the gouging thumb were often employed with fatal effect. Yet among this rude and uncouth people there was a genuine and remarkable respect for law. They seemed to recognize it as an absolute necessity of their existence. In the territory of Kentucky, and afterwards in that of Illinois, it occurred at several periods in the transition from counties to territories and states, that the country was without any organized authority. But the people were a law unto themselves. Their improvised courts and councils administered law and equity; contracts were enforced, debts were collected, and a sort of order was maintained. It may be said, generally, that the character of Vol. L— 2

Chap. I.

this people was far above their circumstances. In all the accessories of life, by which we are accustomed to rate communities and races in the scale of civilization, they were little removed from primitive barbarism. They dressed in the skins of wild beasts kUled by themselves, and in linen stuffs woven by themselves. They hardly knew the use of iron except in their firearms and knives. Their food consisted almost exclusively of game, fish, and roughly ground corn-meal. Their exchanges were made by barter ; many a child grew up without ever seeing a piece of money. Their habitations were hardly superior to those of the savages with whom they waged constant war. Large families lived in log huts, put together without iron, and far more open to the inclemencies of the skies than the pig-styes of the careful farmer of to-day. An early schoolmaster says that the first place where he went to board was the house of one Lucas, consisting of a single room, sixteen feet square, and tenanted by Mr. and Mrs. Lucas, ten children, three dogs, two cats, and himself. There were many who lived in hovels so cold that they had to sleep on their shoes to keep them from freezing too stiff to be put on. The children grew inured to misery like this, and played barefoot m the snow. It is an error to suppose that all this could be undergone with impunity. They suffered terribly from malarial and rheumatic complamts, and the instances of vigorous and painless age were rare among them. The lack of moral and mental sustenance was still more marked. They were inclined to be a religious people, but a sermon was an unusual luxury, only to be enjoyed at long intervals and by great expense of time. There chap. i. were few books or none, and there was httle opportunity for the exchange of opinion. Any variation in the dreary course of events was welcome. A murder was not without its advantages as a stimulus to conversation ; a criminal trial was a kind of holiday to a county. It was this poverty of life, this famine of social gratification, from which sprang their fondness for the grosser forms of excitement, and their tendency to rough and brutal practical joking. In a life like theirs a laugh seemed worth having at any expense.

But near as they were to barbarism in all the circumstances of their daily existence, they were far from it politically. They were the children of a race which had been trained in government for centuries in the best school the world has ever seen, and wherever they went they formed the town, the county, the court, and the legislative power with the ease and certainty of nature evolving its results. And this they accomplished in the face of a savage foe surrounding their feeble settlements, always alert and hostile, invisible and dreadful as the visionary powers of the air. Until the treaty of G-reenville, in 1795, closed the long and sanguinary history of the old Indian wars, there was no day in which the pioneer could leave his cabin with the certainty of not finding it in ashes when he returned, and his little flock murdered on his threshold, or carried into a captivity worse than death. Whenever nightfall came with the man of the house away from home, the anxiety and care of the women and children were none the less bitter because so common.