Life and works of Abraham Lincoln

II New York

The Current Literature Publishing Co.

I NOV 9 t^ i

JgQPY o. I

Copyright, iSoa, by Henry C. Whitney Copyright, 1907, by William H. Lambert

THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS RAHWAY, N. J.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Written to Jesse W. Fell for Use in THE Presidential Campaign of i860

For printed text of this autobiography, see entr^-, Fell. Jesse W., in LETTERS, present edition iTf i i

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Contents

PAGE

Preface vii

The Parents of Abraham Lincoln . , . ix By Ida M. Tarbell

Preface

No claim is made for the present edition that it is unabridged or definitive. The desire has been to make a reading and, indeed, working edition suited to the needs of the average American, to whom everything which reveals the character of the great President is of interest, and anything which does not afford such revelation, even though penned with Lincoln's hand, and signed with his name, is without real associational value.

For practical considerations the chronological sequence of the definitive editions has been subordinated to logical sequence. Speeches are arranged by themselves, state papers by themselves, etc. ; the items of each class being arranged in chronological order. Letters are docketed alphabetically by the names of addressees. The edition is thus made self-indexing, a desirable characteristic of a working library.

For further explanation of the method of bookmaking employed, the reader is referred to the prefaces of each volume. Here, or in the immediate text concerned, will be found the various acknowledgments to publishers, collectors, and authors for the derivation of material.

It suffices to say in this preface that Mr. Francis D. Tandy has generously given the editor general permission to make liberal use of any material in his Gettysburg Edition to which others than himself have no prior rights.

viii PREFACE

For permission to use the biography of Lincoln in the present volume thanks are due to William H. Lambert, President of the Lincoln Fellowship. He is the owner of the voluminous MS. on Lincoln left by the late Henry C. Whitney, one of Lincoln's legal associates and personal and political friends. From this the present work on ''Lincoln the Citizen" has been extracted. It is confidently expected that the public will find in this character study a personal view of that most human of great men, which is second in general interest only to the life of Lincoln by his law partner, William H. Herndon, and surpasses this in many particular points of keen insight and generous appreciation. Mr. Whitney's "Life" ends at Lincoln's inauguration. After that the biography of the President merges into the history of his country, to the many works upon which the reader is referred.

Thanks are extended to The Lincoln Farm Association, and particularly to its secretary, Richard Lloyd Jones, for permission to use Miss Tarbell's article, "The Parents of Abraham Lincoln" as an introduction to "Lincoln the Citizen."

The mutual helpfulness of these Lincoln associations and publications is the best of tributes to the beneficent influence of that great man to whom "charity" in the broad sense of loving aid and consideration extended to all men was the dearest of words and things. In the hope that we, too, may share in the honor of promoting the fraternal movement which is preparing to inaugurate a new century of the higher patriotism represented by Abraham Lincoln, we present this Centenary Edition of his Life and Works.

THE PARENTS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IDA M. TARBELL

Among the many wrongs of history — and they are legion — there is none in our American chapter at least which is graver than that which has been done the parents, and particularly the mother, of Abraham Lincoln. Of course, I refer to the widespread tradition that Lincoln was born of that class known in the South as ''poor whites," that his father was not Thomas Lincoln, as his biographers insist on declaring, but a rich and cultured planter of another State than Kentucky, and that his mother not only gave a fatherless boy to the world, but herself was a nameless child. The tradition has always lacked particularity. For instance, there has been large difference of opinion about the planter who fathered Abraham, who he was and where he came from. One story calls him Enloe, another Calhoun, another Hardin, and several different States claim him. Only five years ago a book was published in North Carolina to prove that Lincoln's father was a resident of that State. The bulk of the testimony offered in this instance came from men and women who had been born long after Abraham Lincoln, had never seen him, and never heard the tale they repeated until long after his election to the Presidency. Of the truth of these state-

X PARENTS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ments as to Lincoln's origin no proof has ever been produced. They were rumors, diHgently spread in the first place by those who for political purposes were glad to belittle a political opponent. They grew with telling, and, curiously enough, two of Lincoln's best friends helped perpetuate them — Messrs. Lamon and Herndon — both of whom wrote lives of the President which are of great interest and value. But neither of these men was a student, and they did not take the trouble to look for records of Mr. Lincoln's birth. They accepted rumors and enlarged upon them. Indeed, it was not until perhaps twenty-five years ago that the matter was taken up seriously and an investigation begun. This has been going on at intervals ever since, until I venture to say that few persons born in a pioneer community, as Lincoln was, and as early as 1809, have their lineage on both sides as clearly established as that of Abraham Lincoln. It takes, indeed, a most amazing credulity for any one to believe the stories I have alluded to after having looked at the records of his family. Lincoln himself, backed by the record in the Lincoln family Bible, is the first authority for the time and place of his birth, as well as the names of his father and mother. The father, Thomas Lincoln, far from being a "poor white," was the son o^a prosperous Kentucky pioneer, a man of honorable and wellestablished lineage who had come from Virginia as a friend of Daniel Boone, and had there bought large tracts of land and begun to grow up with the country, where he was killed by the Indians. He left a large family. By the law of Kentucky the estate went mainly to the oldest son, and the youngest, Thomas Lincoln, was left to shift for

PARENTS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN xi

himself. This youngest son grew to manhood, and on June lo, 1806, was married, at Beechland, Ky., to a young woman of a family well known in the vicinity, Nancy Hanks. There is no doubt whatever about the time and the place of their marriage. All the legal documents required in Kentucky at that period for a marriage are in existence. Not only have we the bond and the certificate, but the marriage is duly entered in a list of marriage returns made by Jesse Head, one of the best-known early Methodist ministers of Kentucky. It is now to be seen in the records of Washington County, Kentucky. There is even in existence a very full and amusing account of the wedding and the fanfare which followed, by a guest who was present, and who for years after was accustomed to visit Thomas and Nancy. This guest, Christopher Columbus Graham, a unique and perfectly trustworthy man, a prominent citizen of Louisville, died only a few years ago.

But while these documents dispose efifectually of the question of the parentage of Lincoln, they do not, of course, clear up the shadow which hangs over the parentage of his mother. Is there anything to show that Nancy Hanks herself was of as clear and clean lineage as her husband? There had been nothing whatever until, a few years ago, through the efforts of Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock of Cambridge, Mass., who had in preparation the genealogy of the Hanks family in America, a little volume was published, showing what she had established in regard to Nancy Hanks. Mrs. Hitchcock had begun at the far end of the line — the arrival of one Benjamin Hanks in Massachusetts in 1699.

xii PARENTS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

She discovered that one of his sons, William, moved to Virginia, and that in the latter part of the eighteenth century his children formed in Amelia County of that State a large settlement. All the records of these families she found in the Hall of Records in Richmond. When the migration into Kentucky began, late in the century, it was joined by many members of the Hanks settlement in Amelia County. Among others to go was Joseph Hanks with his wife, Nancy Shipley Hanks, and their children. Mrs. Hitchcock traced this Joseph Hanks, by means of land records, to Nelson County, Kentucky, where she found that he died in 1793, leaving behind a will, which she discovered in the records of Bardstown, Ky. This will shows that at the time of his death Joseph Hanks had eight living children, to whom he bequeathed property. The youngest of these was ''My daughter Nancy," as the will puts it.

Mrs. Hitchcock's first query, on reading this will, was : "Can it be that this little girl — she was but nine years old when her father died — is the Nancy Hanks who sixteen years later became the mother of Abraham Lincoln ?" She determined to find out. She learned from relations and friends of the family of Joseph Hanks still living that, soon after her father's death, Nancy went to live with an uncle, Richard Berry, who, the records showed, had come from Virginia to Kentucky at the same time that Joseph Hanks came. A little further research, and Mrs. Hitchcock found that there had been brought to light through the efforts of friends of Abraham Lincoln all the documents to show that in 1806 Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln were married at Beechland, Ky. Now,

PARENTS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN xiii

one of these documents was a marriage bond. It was signed by Richard Berry, the uncle of the Httle girl recognized in the will of Joseph Hanks. Here, then, was the chain complete. The marriage bond and marriage returns not only showed that Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln were married regularly three years before the birth of Abraham Lincoln, thus forever settling any question as to the parentage of Lincoln, but they showed that this Nancy Hanks was the one named in the will. The suspicion in regard to the origin of Lincoln's mother was removed by this discovery of the will, for the recognition of any one as his child by a man in his will is considered by the law as sufficient proof of paternity.

Now what sort of people were Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks ? It has been inferred by those who have made no investigation of Thomas Lincoln's life that Nancy Hanks made a very poor choice of a husband. The facts do not entirely warrant this theory. Thomas Lincoln had been forced from his boyhood to shift for himself in a young and undeveloped country. He is known to have been a man who in spite of this wandering life contracted no bad habits. He was temperate and honest, and his name is recorded in more than one place in the records of Kentucky. He was a church-goer, and, if tradition may be believed, a stout defender of his peculiar religious views. He held advanced ideas of what was already an important public question in Kentucky, the right to hold negroes as slaves. One of his old friends has said of him and his wife, Nancy Hanks, that they were ''just steeped full of notions about the wrongs of slavery and the rights of men, as exxiv PARENTS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

plained by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine." These facts show that he must have been a man of some natural intelligence. He had a trade and owned a farm.

As for Nancy Hanks, less that is definite is known of her. In nature, in education, and in ambition she was, if tradition is to be believed, far above her husband. She was famous for her spinning and her household accomplishments, it is said.

It was to these two people, then, that Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809. His birthplace was a farm Thomas Lincoln owned, and near Elizabeth, Ky. The home into which the little chap came was the ordinary one of the poorer Western pioneer — a one-roomed cabin with a huge outside chimney. Although in many ways it was no doubt uncomfortable, there is no reason to believe it was an unhappy or a squalid one. The log house, with its great fireplace and heavy walls, is not such a bad place to live in — some of us are thankful to get away into the country to one now and then even in winter. Its furniture was simple, and no doubt much of it home-made. The very utensils were of home manufacture. The feathers in the beds were plucked from the geese Nancy Lincoln raised. She patched her own quilts, spun her own linsey-woolsey. No doubt Thomas Lincoln made Abraham's cradle and Nancy Lincoln spun the cloth for his first garments. They raised their own corn, dried their own fruit, hunted their own game, raised their own pork and beef. It was the hard life of the pioneer where every man provides for his own needs. It had discomforts, but it had, too, that splendid independence and resourceful-

PARENTS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN xv

ness which comes only from being sufficient to your own needs.

That the two people who endured its hardships, and made in spite of them a home where a boy could conceive and nourish such ideals and enthusiasms as inspired Abraham Lincoln from his early years should have their names darkened by unfounded suspicions is a cruel injustice against which every honest and patriotic American ought to set his face.

Chapter I Lineage, Parentage, And Childhood

In the year 1619, in the then considerable, rudely built, and socially isolated city of Norwich, the shire town of Norfolk County, England, in one of the humble families, was born a child who, in due course of time, received the baptismal appellation of Samuel Lincoln.

During the same year, at Jamestown, a newly founded hamlet in the wilderness of North America, a vessel, in stress of want, cast anchor in the river and oflFered in exchange for supplies, as their sole vendible property, sundry human chattels, which the Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, then in com.mand, chiefly from considerations of humanity to the destitute sailors, accepted, and the transaction was deemed of sufficient consequence to be thus jotted down in the sober chronicles of a town gossip : ''About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negass/' The vessel, thus relieved, proceeded home, and, coincident with its arrival in Holland, an incident occurred in a neighboring harbor, which is thus narrated by the local historian :

So they left that goodly and pleasant City of Leyden, which had been their resting place for above eleven years : but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest Country where God had prepared for them a City (Heb. xi. i6) and therein quieted their spirits. When they came to Delfs-Haven, they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them, followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leavs of them. . . . But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away that were thus loathe to depart, their reverend pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks, commended them with most fervent prayers unto the Lord and his blessing; and then, with mutual embraces and many tears, they took their leavs one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them.

These several events did not appear to have any interrelation, but to be as remote in their moral as in their geographical association ; but a retrospective glance reveals the truth that these incidents were acts in the same drama, cantos in the same epic, complementary in the moral world, the bane and antidote of the greatest moral offence of modern days.

When Samuel Lincoln attained the age of eighteen, he joined in the migration to New England then rife, and landed at Salem in Massachusetts, where he became an apprentice to Francis Lawes, a weaver, remaining until he attained his majority, when he shouldered his bundle and made his way on foot through the wilderness where now are Swampscott, Lynn, Chelsea, Boston, Braintree, and Quincy, to the hamlet of Hingham, which had been founded in the fall of 1635. In this same little hamlet, there had settled, in the year 1636, Thomas Lincoln, the miller, Thomas Lincoln, the cooper, and Thomas Lincoln, the weaver, the latter being a brother to Samuel; and in 1638, Thomas Lincoln, the farmer, and his brother Stephen, settled there. All came from the county of Norfolk, England: Thomas, the weaver, from Hingham, Samuel from Norwich, Thomas, the farmer, and Stephen from Windham.

A great-grandson of Thomas, the cooper, was Benjamin, a Major General in the Revolutionary War, the same who received the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, who also quelled ''Shays' " RebeUion in Western Massachusetts in 1787, and to whom, when Knox retired, was tendered the position of Secretary of War in Washington's Cabinet, which honor he declined. Another descendant of Samuel Lincoln was Levi Lincoln, who was a member of Congress and Attorney General of the United States in Jefferson's Cabinet from March 5, 1801, to December 23, 1805. President Madison appointed him a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, but Lincoln was obliged to decline the appointment on account of a failure of his eyesight. A son of this Lincoln was named Levi also. He filled many high offices, including that of Governor of Massachusetts from 1825 to 1834, and Member of Congress from 1835 to 1841, and was prominently mentioned as a candidate for President of the United States. He had a brother, Enoch, who was a Member of Congress from 1818 to 1826, and Governor of Maine from 1827 till his death. These illustrious men were cousins of Abraham Lincoln in a remote degree. The similarity of their Hebraic names to those of the immediate ancestry of the President cannot fail to be noticed.

Samuel Lincoln had ten children, one of whom was Mordecai, Avho was born at Hingham in 1657, and became a blacksmith at Hull, where he married, and in 1704 removed to the neighboring town of Scituate, where he established a furnace for the smelting of ore. He was a man of substance, and in his will bequeathed lands in both Hingham and Scituate, a saw- and grist-mill, iron works, and considerable money ; he also made provision for a collegiate education for three grandsons. Of his five children, Mordecai Jr. the eldest removed from Scituate, when his eldest son, John, was born, to Monmouth County, New Jersey, and afterwards to Chester, Penn., and Berks County in Pennsylvania in due succession.

The son, John, had five sons, named respectively John, Thomas, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, together with daughters. In 1758 he removed to the northern part of Augusta County, Virginia, which county was, in 1779, detached and joined to Rockingham County.

The son, Abraham, migrated to the northwest part of North Carolina, to the waters of the Catawba River, where he married Miss Mary Shipley, by whom he had three several sons, named, respectively, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas ; and, during or about the year 1780, emigrated with several families of the Berrys and Shipleys to Kentucky, which, though known as *'the dark and bloody ground," by reason of the many Indian massacres, was at that time attracting much attention through reports of its extreme fertility made by such explorers as Boone, Newton, and Clark, the explorations of the former commencing in 1769.

There were eight famiHes in all, and these, when they arrived to within twenty-five or thirty miles southeast of Crab Orchard, were attacked by Indians, and some of the party were wounded, and one woman taken prisoner. These immigrants settled in Jefferson and Washington Counties, Kentucky, but the specific settlement of Abraham Lincoln is somewhat obscured by doubt. One excellent biographer fixes the location in Mercer County, but his authority therefor does not appear. Several others, repeating each other, name Floyd's Creek in what is now known as Bullitt County, and, in point of fact, Abraham Lincoln did on May 29, 1780, enter four hundred acres of land on Long Run, a branch of Floyd's fork of Salt River, whence there is reason to suppose that upon that land he made his settlement. Hon. J. L. Nail, a great-grandson of the pioneer, and a grandson of his daughter Nancy, who married William Brumfield, avers * that his ancestor settled at the present site of Louisville, and adduces in support of his statement the concurrent evidence of his great-grandmother, the wife of the pioneer, and who lived to the great age of one hundred and ten years, and of his grandmother ; also of his great-uncle, Mordecai Lincoln, all of whom he has heard talk of the subject frequently.

After settling in Kentucky, there were added to his family two daughters, Mary, who afterwards married Ralph Crume, and Nancy, who thereafter married William Brumfield; and in 1784, while he was at work in the clearing, attended only by his youngest son, Thomas, the father of the President, he was fatally shot by an * This history was written in 1892.

Indian. The eldest son, Mordecai, shot and killed the savage just as he picked up little Thomas and was starting to make off with his prize, and so the boy was saved to become the father of the President.

There is a dispute about the location of the scene of the tragedy. Mr. Nail writes :

The newspaper article stating that my great-grandfather Lincoln was killed on Lincoln's Run is altogether wrong: he was killed at "Beargrass" fort, as 1 got it directly from my grandmother, who was in the fort at the time, and knew what she was talking about. While he lived in the fort, he entered four hundred acres of land on Floyd's fork of Salt Run in what is now Bullitt County, Kentucky. . . . My great-grandmother, Mary Shipley Lincoln, moved with my grandfather, William Brumfield, who married her daughter Nancy, to Hardin County, Kentucky, and lived the balance of her long life with them, and died, when I was a good big boy, at the age of one hundred and ten years.

The grandmother and great-grandmother were both present at this tragedy, which must have impressed itself deeply upon their minds. So likewise must it have been ever present to the mind of his grand-uncle, Mordecai, who was one of the chief actors in that frontier tragedy ; and the writer of the above, a highly intelligent and, in all respects, honorable man, professes to have heard it often talked of in the family circle. Under ordinary circumstances this would be historically conclusive, and certainly as well attested as historical facts usually are ; while nobody fixes authoritatively any different locality.

As militating against the above theory is the following: Abraham Lincoln was killed in 1784. In May, 1780, the town of Louisville was chartered by the Virginia Legislature, and a tract of one thousand acres plotted into half-acre lots, the boundaries of the thousand acres being First and Twelfth Streets, and Main and Chestnut Streets. A large number of the lots were immediately sold at auction; and in 1782 there were a hundred householders there, and in 1783 a general store was established. In 1782 a fort was erected and designated "Fort Nelson," but nowhere spoken of as the ''Beargrass" Fort; and in all the histories of Louisville which profess to include all names of the early pioneers, no mention whatever is made of Abraham Lincoln.

Indeed, in 1784, the date of the pioneer's death, a prosperous village of between 500 and 1,000 inhabitants was located at or near the alleged site of the murder.

The Washington County Herald (Springfield, Ky.), deriving its information from old citizens, fixes the site of the tragedy at "Lincoln's Run," about five miles northwest of Springfield. I incline to think this is correct, although I have great faith in Mr. Nail and his general accuracy about these matters.

At this time the Virginia law of primogeniture was in force, and the four hundred acres on Floyd's Creek, became vested in Mordecai, the eldest son. The widow, with her three sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, and two daughters, Mary and Nancy, removed to Washington County, and, settling on a creek which from that circumstance took the name of "Lincoln's Run," remained there till all the children reached the age of maturity.

Mordecai, as I was informed by President Lincoln himself, married a Miss Mudd, who belonged to one of the best families of Kentucky.

He afterwards became Sheriff of Washington County and likewise represented the same county in the Legislature, He then removed to Grayson County, Kentucky, and ultimately to Hancock County, Illinois, where he died.* Josiah, the second of this name, removed early in life to Harrison County, in southern Indiana, the second county east of that in which his brother Thomas afterwards settled and there died. The eldest daughter, Mary, married Ralph Crume in Washington County, and removed to Breckenridge County in Kentucky, where they finally died. Nancy, the youngest daughter, married William Brumfield in Washington County and thereafter removed to Hardin, where they ultimately died.

The widow of Abraham Lincoln Sr. took up her abode with her youngest daughter, Nancy (Lincoln) Brumfield, and removed with her to Hardin County, Kentucky, where she died at the age of one hundred and ten years, being buried at Old Mill Creek burying-ground. Mordecai's descendents I have no trace of, except Mrs. Levi Smith, who lived a few years since near Springfield, Ky. The Hon. J. L. Nail, a grandson of the youngest daughter, Nancy (Lincoln) Brumfield, has been a member of the Kentucky Legislature and is now a merchant in southwestern Missouri. A granddaughter of the eldest sister, Mary (Lincoln) Crume, has been an inmate of Mr. Nail's family for thirty-six years past.

While Mr. Lincoln was a Member of Congress

* "Old men who personally knew Uncle Mordecai said that he was a very smart man and exceedingly popular ; but was a sporting man and somewhat reckless."— A^o//.

In 1848, in reply to inquiries made as to his pedigree, he thus wrote to Hon. Solomon Lincoln of Hingham (since deceased) : ''My father's name was Thomas, my grandfather's was Abraham, the same as my own. My grandfather went from Rockingham County, in Virginia, to Kentucky about the year 1782. And two years afterwards was killed by the Indians. We have a vague tradition that my great-grandfather went from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and that he was a Quaker. Further than that, I have never heard anything. It may do no harm to say that Abraham and Mordecai are common names in our family." And in a subsequent letter written during the same year, he says : "I have mentioned that my grandfather's name was Abraham. He had, as I think I have heard, four brothers, Isaac, Jacob, Thomas, and John." *

Thomas Lincoln, the youngest son, who was with his father when the latter lost his life, was by this circumstance, as well as from the paucity of common schools, deprived of an opportunity to acquire an education, and never attended school in his entire life. The era of childhood was to him one of almost unrestrained liberty, privation, and adventure. He was bom and spent his entire life on the frontier ; had no culture and was ignorant of the restraints and refinement of enlightened society. He was, however, a man of good native abilities and kindly instincts, but with no system, progress, or normal business qualities; hence he made but little provision for the future and took little thought of the morrow.

William G. Greene, who spent one day with

* See also autobiographical data, sketches, etc., in Letters (to Fell, Hicks, et al.) in present edition.

lo LINCOLN THE CITIZEN

him, and felt interested to make a study of him, avers that he was a man of great native reasoning powers and fine social magnetism, reminding him of his illustrious son ; but that, having received no education, drill, or discipline, he knew nothing of persistency of effort in a continuous line, nor of the laws of thrift or financial cause and effect; that he evidently was industrious, though shifting rapidly from one thing to another ; that he was candid and truthful, popular with his neighbors, and brave to temerity. He was very stoutly built, about five feet ten inches high, and weighed nearly two hundred pounds ; his desire was to be on terms of amity and sociability with every one. He had a great stock of border anecdotes and professed a marvellous proclivity to entertain by "spinning yarns" and narrating his youthful experiences.^ He was an inveterate hunter, as, indeed, were most of the pioneers. In both Kentucky and southern Indiana, in the vicinage of his homes, every man and boy owned a rifle, and it was unsafe and also unusual to go through the woods unarmed. Game, particularly deer, was one of the chief staples of existence. Before Thomas had attained his majority, he wended his way on foot across the Cumberland Mountains, to eastern Tennessee, where he worked on a farm for his uncle Isaac, who had settled on one of the affluents of the Holstein River. Upon his return to Kentucky, he entered as an apprentice to learn the cabinetmaker's trade