The life of Abraham Lincoln, drawn from original sources and containing many speeches, letters, and telegrams hitherto unpublished

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

The work here offered the public was begun in 1894 at the suggestion of Mr. S. S. McClure and Mr. J. S. Phillips, editors of " McClure's Magazine." Their desire was to add to our knowledge of Abraham Lincoln by collecting and preserving the reminiscences of such of his contemporaries as were then living. In undertaking the work it was determined to spare neither labor nor money and in this determination Mr. McClure and his associates have never wavered. Without the sympathy, confidence, suggestion and criticism which they have given the work it would have been impossible. They established in their editorial rooms what might be called a Lincoln Bureau and from there an organized search was made for reminiscences, pictures and documents. To facilitate the work all persons possessing or knowing of Lincoln material were asked through the Magazine to communicate with the editor. The response was immediate and amazing. Hundreds of persons from all parts of the country replied. In every case the clews thus obtained were investigated and if the matter was found to be new and useful was secured. The author wrote thousands of letters and travelled thousands of miles in collecting the material which came to the editor simply as a result of this request in the magazine. The work thus became one in which the whole country co-operated.

At the outset it was the intention of the editors to use the results of the research simply as a series of unpublished rem-

vii viii PREFACE

iniscences, but after a few months the new material gathered, while valuable seemed to them too fragmentary to be published as it stood, and the author was asked to prepare a series of articles on Lincoln covering his life up to 1858 and embodying as far as possible the unpublished material collected. These articles, which appeared in " McClure's Magazine " for 1895 and 1896, were received favorably, and it was decided to follow them by a series on the later life of Lincoln. This latter series was concluded in September, 1899, and both series, with considerable supplementary matter, are published in the present volumes.

It is impossible in this brief preface to mention all who have aided in the work, but there are a few whose names must not be omitted, so essential has their assistance been to the enterprise.

From the beginning Mr. J. McCan Davis of Springfield, Illinois, has been of great service, particularly in examining the files of Illinois newspapers and in interviewing. It is to Mr. Davis's intelligent and patient research that we owe the report of Lincoln's first published speech, the curious letters on the Adams law case, most of the documents of Lincoln's early life in New Salem and Springfield, such as his first vote, his reports and maps of surveys, his marriage certificate and many of the letters printed in the appendix. Mr. William H. Lambert of Philadelphia has also assisted us constantly by his sympathy and suggestions, and his large and valuable Lincoln collection has been freely at our disposal. Other collections that have been generously opened are those of O. H. Oldroyd of Washington, R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky., C. F. Gunther, Chicago, 111., and Louis Vanuxem, Philadelphia, Pa. The War Department of the United States Government has extended many courtesies, the War Records being freely opened and the members of the War Records Commission aiding us in every way

PREFACE ix

in their power. The librarians of the War Department, of the Congressional Library, of the Boston Public Library and of the Astor Library of New York, have also been most helpful.

The chief obligation which any student of Abraham Lincoln owes is to the great work of Messrs. Nicolay and Hay. In it are collected nearly all the documents essential to a study of Lincoln's life. Their History has been freely consulted in preparing this work and whenever letters and speeches of Lincoln appearing in their collection of his writings have been quoted, their version has been followed. Other lives of Lincoln that have been found useful are those of W. H. Herndon, W. O. Stoddard, John T. Morse, Isaac Arnold, Ward H. Lamon, H. C. Whitney, and J. G. Holland.

The new material collected will, we believe, add considerably to our knowledge of Lincoln's life. Documents are presented establishing clearly that his mother was not the nameless girl that she has been so generally believed. His father, Thomas Lincoln, is shown to have been something more than a shiftless " poor white," and Lincoln's early life, if hard and crude, to have been full of honest, cheerful efifort at betterment. His struggles for a livelihood and his intellectual development from the time he started out for himself until he was admitted to the bar are traced with more detail than in any other biography, and considerable new light is thrown on this period of his life. The sensational account of his running away from his own wedding, accepted generally by historians, is shown to be false. To the period of Lincoln's life from 1849, when he gave up politics, until 1858, the period of the Lincoln and Douglas Debates, the most important contribution made is the report of what is known as the " Lost Speech."

The second volume of the Life contains as an appendix

X PREFACE

196 pages of letters, telegrams and speeches which do not appear in Lincoln's " Complete Works," published by his private secretaries Messrs. Nicolay and Hay. The great majority of these documents have never been published at all. The source from vi^hich they have been obtained is given in each case.

No attempt has been made to cover the history of Lincoln's times save as necessary in tracing the development of his mind and in illustrating his moral qualities. It is Lincoln the man, as seen by his fellows and revealed by his own acts and words, that the author has tried to picture. This has been the particular aim of the second series of articles.

I. M. T

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. The Origin of the Lincoln Family — The Lincolns in

Kentucky — Birth of Abraham Lincoln i

Chapter I. The Origin Of The Lincoln Family The Lincolns In

KENTUCKY BIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Between the years 1635 and 1645 there came to the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, from the west of England, eight men named Lincoln. Three of these, Samuel, Daniel, and Thomas, were brothers. Their relationship, if any, to the other Lincolns who came over from the same part of England at about the same time, is not clear. Two of these men, Daniel and Thomas, died without heirs ; but Samuel left a large family, including four sons. Among the descendants of Samuel Lincoln's sons were many good citizens and prominent public officers. One was a member of the Boston Tea Party, and served as a captain of artillery in the War of the Revolution. Three served on the brig Hazard during the Revolution. Levi Lincoln, a great-great-grandson of Samuel, bom in Hingham in 1749, and graduated from Harvard, was one of the minute-men at Cambridge immediately after the battle of Lexington, a delegate to the convention in Cambridge for framing a state constitution, and in 1 781 was elected to the continental congress, but declined to serve. He was a member of the house of representatives and of the senate of Massachusetts, and was appointed attorney-general of the United States by Jefferson ; for a few months preceding the arrival of Madison he was secretary of s'tate, and in 1807 he was elected lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. (x)

In i8ii he was appointed associate justice of the United States Supreme Court by President Madison, an office which he decHned. From the close of the Revolutionary war he was considered the head of the Massachusetts bar.

His eldest son, Levi Lincoln, born in 1782, had also an honorable career. He was a Harvard graduate, became governor of the state of Massachusetts, and held other important public offices. He received the degree of LL. D. from both Williams College, and Harvard College.

Another son of Levi Lincoln, Enoch Lincoln, served in congress from 1818 to 1826. He became governor of Maine in 1827, holding the position until his death in 1829. Enoch Lincoln was a writer of more than ordinary ability.

The fourth son of Samuel Lincoln was called Mordecai. Mordecai was a rich " blacksmith," as an iron-worker was called in those days, and the proprietor of numerous ironworks, saw-mills, and grist-mills, which with a goodly amount of money he distributed at his death among his children and grandchildren. Two of his children, Mordecai and Abraham, did not remain in Massachusetts, but removed to New Jersey, and thence to Pennsylvania, where both became rich, and dying, left fine estates to their children. Their descendants in Pennsylvania have continued to this day to be well-to-do people, some of them having taken prominent positions in public affairs. Abraham Lincoln, of Berks county, who was born in 1736 and died in 1806, filled many public offices, being a member of the general assembly of Pennsylvania, of the state convention of 1787, and of the state constitutional convention in 1790.

One of the sons of this second Mordecai, John, received from his father " three hundred acres of land, lying in the Jerseys." But evidently he did not care to cultivate his inheritance, for about 1758 he removed to Virginia. "Virginia John," as this member of the family was called, had five sons one of whom, Jacob, entered the Revolutionaryarmy and served as a heutenant at Yorktown. The third son was named Abraham and to him his father conveyed, in 1773, a tract of 210 acres of land in what is now Rockingham county, Virginia. But though Abraham Lincoln prospered and added to these acres he was not satisfied to remain many years in Virginia. It was not strange. The farm on which he lived lay close to the track of one of the earliest of those wonderful western migrations which from time to time have taken place in this country. Soon after John Lincoln came into Virginia vague rumors began to be circulated there of a rich western land called Kentucky. These rumors rapidly developed into facts, as journeys were made into the new land by John Finley, Daniel Boone and other adventure-loving men, and settlers began to move thither from Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. There were but two roads by which Kentucky could be reached then, the national highway from Philadelphia to Pittsburg and thence by the Ohio, and the highway which ran from Philadelphia south-westward through the Virginia valley to Cumberland Gap and thence by a trail called the Wilderness Road, northwest to the Ohio at Louisville. The latter road was considered less dangerous and more practical than the former and by it the greater part of the emigrants journeyed. Now this road lay through Rockingham county. Abraham Lincoln was thus directly under the influence of a moving procession of restless seekers after new lands and unknown goods. The spell came upon him and, selling two hundred and forty acres of land in Rockingham County for five thousand pounds of the current money of Virginia — a sum worth at that time not more than one hundred and twenty-five pounds sterling — he joined a party of travelers to the Wilderness. Returning a few months later he moved his whole family, consisting of a wife and five children, into Kentucky.

Abraham Lincoln was ambitious to become a landed proprietor in the new country, and he entered a generous amount of land — four hundred acres on Long run, in Jefferson county ; eight hundred acres on Green river, near the Green river lick ; five hundred acres in Campbell county. He settled near the first tract, where he undertook to clear a farm. It was a dangerous task, for the Indians were still troublesome, and the settlers, for protection, were forced to live in or near forts or stations. In 1784, when John Filson published his " History of Kentucky," though there was a population of thirty thousand in the territory, there were but eighteen houses outside of the stations. Of these stations, or stockades, there were but fifty-two. According to the tradition in the Lincoln family, Abraham Lincoln lived at Hughes Station on Floyd creek in Jefferson county.

All went well with him and his family until 1788. Then, one day, while he and his three sons were at work in their clearing, an unexpected Indian shot killed the father. His death was a terrible blow to the family. The large tracts of land which he had entered were still uncleared, and his personal property was necessarily small. The difficulty of reaching the country at that date, as well as its wild condition, made it impracticable for even a wealthy pioneer to own more stock or household furniture than was absolutely essential. Abraham Lincoln was probably as well provided with personal property as most of his neighbors. The inventory of his estate, now owned by R. T. Durrett, LL. D., of Louisville, Kentucky, was returned by the appraisers on March 10, 1789. It gives a clearer idea of the condition in which he left his wife and children, than any description could do :

t. s. d.

I Sorrel horse 8

I Black horse g 10

I Red cow and calf 4 10

I s. d.

I Brindle cow and calf 4 10

I Red cow and calf 5

I Brindle bull yearling I

I Brindle heifer yearling I

Bar spear-plough and tackling 2 5

3 Weeding hoes 7 6

Flax wheel 6

Pair smoothing irons 15

1 Dozen pewter plates ; i 10

2 Pewter dishes 17 6

Small iron kettle, and cule, weighing 13 lbs. la

Tool adds 10

Hand saw S

One-inch auger 6

Three-quarter auger 4 6

Half-inch auger 3

Drawing-knife 3

Currying-knife 10

Currier's knife and barking-iron 6

Old smooth-bar gun 10

Rifle gun 55

Rifle gun 3 10

2 Pott trammels 14

I Feather bed and furniture 5 10

Ditto 8 5

I Bed and turkey feathers and furniture. ... i 10

Steeking-iron I 6

Candle-stick i 6

I Axe 9

i68 i6s 6d

Soon after the death of Abraham Lincoln, his widow moved from Jefferson county to Washington county. Here the eldest son, Mordecai, who inherited nearly all of the large estate, became a well-to-do and popular citizen. The deedbook of Washington County contains a number of records of lands bought and sold by him. At one time he was sheriff of his county and according to a tradition of his descendants a member of the Kentucky legislature. His name is not to be found however in the fullest collection of journals of the Kentucky legislature which exists, that of Dr. R. T. Durett of Louisville, Kentucky. Mordecai Lincoln is remembered especially for his sporting tastes, his bitter hatred of the Indians and his ability as a story-teller. He remained in Kentucky until late in life, when he removed to Hancock County, Illinois.

Of Josiah, the second son, we know very little more than that the records show that he owned and siold land. He left Kentucky when a young man, to settle on the Blue river, in Harrison County, Indiana, and there he died. The two daughters married into well-known Kentucky families; the elder, Mary, marrying Ralph Crume; the younger, Nancy, William Brumfield.

The death of Abraham Lincoln was saddest for the youngest of the children, a lad of ten years at the time, named Thomas, for it turned him adrift to become a " wandering laboring-boy " before he had learned even to read. Thomas seems not to have inherited any of the father's estate, and from the first to have been obliged to shift for himself. For several years he supported himself by rough farm work of all kinds, learning, in the meantime, the trade of carpenter and cabinet-maker. According to one of his acquaintances, " Tom had the best set of tools in what was then and now Washington County," and was " a good carpenter for those days, when a cabin was built mainly with the axe, and not a nail or bolt-hinge in it; only leathers and pins to the door, and no glass." Although a skilled craftsman for his day, he never became a thrifty or ambitious man. " He would work energetically enough when a job was brought to him, but he would never seek a job." But if Thomas Lincoln plied his trade spasmodically, he shared the pioneer's love for land, for when but twenty-five years old, and still without the responsibility of a family, he bought a farm in Hardin

County, Kentucky. This fact is of importance, proving as it does that Thomas Lincoln was not the altogether shiftless man he has been pictured. Certainly he must have been above the grade of the ordinary country boy, to have had the energy and ambition to learn a trade and secure a farm through his own efforts by the time he was twenty-five. He was illiterate, never doing more " in the way of writing than to bunglingly write his own name." Nevertheless, he had the reputation in the country of being good-natured and obliging, and possessing what his neighbors called " good strong horse-sense." Although he was a " very quiet sort of a man," he was known to be determined in his opinions, and quite competent to defend his rights by force if they were too flagrantly violated. He was a moral man, and, in the crude way of the pioneer, religious.

In 1806 Thomas Lincoln married. The early history of his wife, Nancy Hanks, has been until recently obscured by contradictory traditions. The compilation of the genealogy of the Hanks family in America, which has been completed by Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, though not yet printed, has fortunately cleared up the mystery of her birth. According to the records which Mrs. Hitchcock has gathered and a brief summary of which she has published in a valuable little volume called " Nancy Hanks," the family to which Thomas Lincoln's wife belonged first came to this country in 1699 and settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

This early settler, Benjamin Hanks, had eleven children, one of whom, William, went to Virginia, settling near the mouth of the Rappahannock river. William Hanks had five sons, four of whom, about the middle of the eighteenth century, moved to Amelia County, Virginia, where, according to old deeds unearthed by Mrs. Hitchcock, they owned nearly a thousand acres of land. Joseph Hanks, the youngest of these sons, married Nancy Shipley. This Miss Shipley was a daughter of Robert and Rachel Shipley of Lurenburg County, Virginia, and a sister of Mary Shipley, who married Abraham Lincoln of Rockingham County, and who was the mother of Thomas Lincoln.

About 1789 Joseph Hanks and a large number of his relatives in Amelia County moved into Kentucky, where he settled near what is now Elizabethtown. He remained here until his death in 1793. Joseph Hanks's will may still be seen in the county records of Bardstown. He leaves to each of his sons a horse, to each of his daughters a " heifer yearling," though these bequests, as well as the " whole estate " of one hundred and fifty acres of land was to be the property of his wife during her life, when it was to be divided equally among all the children.

Soon after Joseph Hanks's death his wife died and the family was scattered. The youngest of the eight children left fatherless and motherless by the death of Joseph Hanks and his wife was a little girl called Nancy. She was but nine years old at the time and a home was found for her with her aunt, Lucy Shipley, wife of Richard Berry, who had a farm in Washington county, near Springfield. Nancy had a large number of relatives near there, all of whom had come from Virginia with her father. The little girl grew up into a sweet-tempered and beautiful woman whom tradition paints not only as the center of all the country merry-making but as a famous spinner and housewife.

It was probably at the house of Richard Berry that Thomas Lincoln met Nancy Hanks, for he doubtless spent more or less time nearby with his oldest brother, Mordecai Lincoln, who was a resident of Washington County and a friend and neighbor of the Berry's. He may have seen her, too, at the home of her brother, Joseph Hanks, in Elizabethtown. This Joseph Hanks was a carpenter and had inherited the old home of the family and it was with him that li-rfM|j/,,.

MAP OF NEW SALEM, ILLINOIS.

Drawn for this biography by J. McCaun Davis, aided by surviving inhabitants of New Salem. Dr. John Allen, who lived across the road from Berry & Lincoln's store, attended Ann Kutledge in her last illness. None of the buildings are in existence to-day.

lO LIFE OF LINCOLN

Thomas Lincoln learned his trade. At all events, the two cousins became engaged and on June lo, 1806, their marriage bond was issued according to the law of the time. Two days later according to the marriage returns of the Reverend Jesse Head, they were married, — a fact duly attested also by the marriage certificate made out by the officiating minister.

The marriage took place at the home of Richard Berry, near Beechland in Washington County, Kentucky. It was celebrated in the boisterous style of one hundred years ago, and was followed by an infare, given by the bride's guardian. To this celebration came all the neighbors, and, according to an entertaining Kentucky centenarian. Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, even those who happened in the neighborhood were made welcome. He tells how he heard of the wedding while " out hunting for roots," and went " just to get a good supper. I saw Nancy Hanks Lincoln at her wedding," continues Mr. Graham, " a fresh looking girl, I should say over twenty. I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian — and only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had bearmeat ; . . . venison; wild turkey and ducks; eggs, wild and tame, so common that you could buy them at two bits a bushel ; maple sugar, swung on a string, to bite off for coffee or whiskey; syrup in big gourds ; peach-and-honey ; a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juice in ; and a race for the whiskey bottle."

After his marriage Thomas Lincoln settled in Elizabethtown. His home was a log cabin, but at that date few people in the state had anything else. Kentucky had been in the union only fourteen years. When admitted, the few brick structures within its boundaries were easily counted and there were only log school-houses and churches. Fourteen

II ;3|1%

1^5

^ J IS 3 o o

From a tracing of the original, made by Henry Whitney Cleveland. This certificate was discovered about 1885 by W. F. Booker, Esq., Clerk of Washington County, Kentucky.

years had brought great improvements, but the majority of the population still lived in log cabins, so that the home of Thomas Lincoln was as good as most of his neighbors. Little is known of his position in Elizabethtown, though we have proof that he had credit in the community, for the descendants of two of the early store-keepers still remember seeing on their grandfathers' account books sundry items charged to T. Lincoln. Tools and groceries were the chief purchases he made, though on one of the ledgers a pair of " silk suspenders," worth one dollar and fifty cents, was entered. He not only enjoyed a certain credit with the people of Elizabethtown ; he was sufficiently respected by the public authorities to be appointed in 1816 a road surveyor, or, as the office

FAOSlMIIiE OF THE APPOINTMENT OP THOMAS LINCOLN A3 KOAD SUBVUrOB.

is known in some localities, supervisor. It was not, to be sure, a position of great importance, but it proved that he was considered fit to oversee a body of men at a task of considerable value to the community. Indeed, all of the documents mentioning Thomas Lincoln which have been discovered show him to have had a much better position in Hardin county than 'he has been credited with.

It was at Elizabethtown that the first child of the Lincolns, a daughter, was born. Soon after this event Thomas Lincoln decided to combine farming with his trade, and moved to the farm he had bought in 1803 on the Big South fork of NoHn creek, in Hardin County, now La Rue County, three miles from Hodgensville, and about fourteen miles from Elizabethtown. Here he was living when, on February 12, 1809, his second child, a boy, was born. The little new-comer was called Abraham, after his grandfather — a name which had persisted through many preceding generations in both the Lincoln and Hanks families.

The home into which the child came was the ordinary one of the poorer western pioneer — a one-roomed cabin with a huge outside chimney, a single window, and a rude door. The description of its squalor and wretchedness, which are so familiar, have been overdrawn. Dr. Graham, than whom there is no better authority on the life of that day, and who knew Thomas Lincoln well, declares energetically that "It is all stufif about Tom Lincoln keeping his wife in an open shed in a winter. The Lincolns had a cow and calf, milk and butter, a good feather bed — for I have slept on it. They had home-woven 'kiverlids,' big and little pots, a loom and wheel. Tom Lincoln was a man and took care of his wife."

The Lincoln home was undoubtedly rude, and in many ways uncomfortable, but it sheltered a happy family, and its poverty affected the new child but little. He grew to be robust and active and soon learned how endless are the delights and interests the country offers to a child. He had several companions. There was his sister Nancy, or Sarah — ^both names are given her — two years his senior ; there was a cousin of his mother's, ten years older, Dennis Friend (commonly called Dennis Hanks), an active and ingenious leader in sports and mischief ; and there were the neighbors' boys. One of the latter, Austin Gollaher, lived to be over ninety years of age and to his death related with pride how he played with young Lincoln in the shavings of his

ORIGIN OP THE LINCOLN FAMILY 15

father's carpenter shop, hunted coons and ran the woods with him, and once even saved his life.

" Yes," Mr. GoUaher was accustomed to say, " the story that I once saved Abraham Lincoln's life is true. He and I had been going to school together for a year or more, and had become greatly attached to each other. Then school disbanded on account of there being so few scholars, and we did not see each other much for a long while. One Sunday my mother visited the Lincolns, and I was taken along. Abe and I played around all day. Finally, we concluded to cross the creek to hunt for some partridges young Lincoln had seen the day before. The creek was swollen by a recent rain, and, in crossing on the narrow footlog, Abe fell in. Neither of us could swim. I got a long pole and held it out to Abe, who grabbed it. Then I pulled him ashore. He was almost dead, and I was badly scared. I rolled and pounded him in good earnest. Then I got him by the arms and shook him, the water meanwhile pouring out of his mouth. By this means I succeeded in bringing him to, and he was soon all right.

" Then a new difficulty confronted us. If our mothers discovered our wet clothes they would whip us. This we dreaded from experience, and determined to avoid. It was June, the sun was very warm, and we soon dried our clothing by spreading it on the rocks about us. We promised never to tell the story, and I never did until after Lincoln's tragic end."

When the little boy was about four years old the first real excitement of his life occurred. His father moved from the farm on Nolin creek to another some fifteen miles northeast on Knob creek, and here the child began to go to school. At that day the schools in the west were usually accidental, depending upon the coming of some poor and ambitious young man who was willing to teach a few terms while he looked for an opening to something better. The terms were irregular, their length being decided by the time the settlers felt able to board the master and pay his small salary. The chief qualifications for a school-master seem to have been enough strength to keep the " big boys " in order, though one high authority affirms that pluck went " for a heap sight more'n sinnoo with boys."

Many of the itinerant masters were Catholics, strolling Irishmen from the colony in Tennessee, or French priests from Kaskaskia. Lincoln's first teacher, Zachariah Riney, was a Catholic. Of his second teacher, Caleb Hazel, we know even less than of Riney. Mr. Gollaher says that Abraham Lincoln, in those days when he was his schoolmate, was " an unusually bright boy at school, and made splendid progress in his studies. Indeed, he learned faster than any of his schoolmates. Though so young, he studied very hard. He would get spicewood bushes, hack them up on a log, and burn them twt> or three together, for the purpose of giving light by which he might pursue his studies."