The works of Abraham Lincoln ...

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Contents

I. Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln II. Birth and Early Life

III. Life in Indiana ....

IV. Early Life in Illinois: Laborer and

CHAPTER I Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, was born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky on the 12th day of February, 1809. He was born to a very humble station in life, and his early surroundings were rude and rough, but his ancestors for generations had been of that tough fibre, and vigorous physical organization and mental energy, so often found among the pioneers on the frontier of American civilization.

His forefathers removed from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania in the first half of the seventeenth century ; and from Pennsylvania some members of the family moved to Virginia, and settled in the valley of the Shenandoah, in the county of Rockingham, whence his immediate ancestors came to Kentucky. For several generations they kept on the crest of the wave of Western settlement.

The family were English, and came from Norfolk County, England, about the year 1638, when they settled in Hingham, Mass. Mordecai Lincoln, the English emigrant to Massachusetts, removed afterward to Pennsylvania, and was the great-great-grandfather of the President. His son John, who was the great-grandfather of the President, moved to Virginia, and had a son Abraham, the grandfather of the President. He and his son Thomas moved, in 1782, from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky.

These ancestors of the President were rough, hardy, fearless men, and famiHar with woodcraft ; men who could endure the extremes of fatigue and exposure, who knew how to find food and shelter in the forest; brave, self-reliant, true and faithful to their friends, and dangerous to their enemies.

The grandfather of the President and his son Thomas emigrated to Kentucky in 1781 or 1782, and settled in Mercer County. This grandfather is named in the surveys of Daniel Boone as having purchased of the United States five hundred acres of land. A year or two after this settlement in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, having erected a log cabin near ''Bear Grass Fort," the site of the present city of Louisville, began to open up his farm.

THE DEATH OF LINCOLN'S GRANDFATHER

*'One morning, in the year 1784," as related by Nicolay and Hay, "Lincoln's grandfather Abraham started with his three sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, to the edge of the clearing, and began the day's work. A shot from the brush killed the father ; Mordecai, the eldest son, ran instinctively to the house, Josiah to the neighboring fort for assistance, and Thomas, the youngest, a child of six, was left with the corpse of his father. Mordecai, reaching the cabin, seized the rifle, and saw through the loophole an Indian in his war-paint stooping to raise the child from the ground. He took deliberate aim at a white ornament on the breast of the savage

ANCESTRY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 3

and brought him down. The Httle boy, thus released, ran to the cabin, and Mordecai, from the loft, renewed his fire upon the savages, who began to show themselves from the thicket, until Josiah returned with assistance from the stockade, and the assailants fled. This tragedy made an indelible impression on the mind of Mordecai. Either a spirit of revenge for his murdered father, or a sportsmanlike pleasure in his successful shot, made him a determined Indianstalker, and he rarely stopped to inquire whether the red man who came within range of his rifle was friendly or hostile."

UNCLE MORDECAI

Striking characteristics appear to have been noted in all the Lincolns of whom we have any accounts. Some reminiscences related of Mordecai, after he had reached manhood, give a pleasing glimpse of the boy who showed such coolness and daring on the occasion that ended his father's life. The following is taken from F. F. Browne's interesting Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln. ''He was naturally a man of considerable genius," says one who knew him. ''He was a man of great drollery, and it would almost make you laugh to look at him. I never saw but one other man whose quiet, droll look excited in me the same disposition to laugh, and that was Artemus Ward. Mordecai was quite a story-teller, and in this Abe resembled his 'Uncle Mord' as we called him. He was an honest man, as tender-hearted as a woman, and to the last degree charitable and benevolent. . . . Abe Lincoln had a very high opinion of his uncle, and on one occasion remarked, 'I have often said that Uncle Mord had run off with all the talents of the family.' "

THOMAS LINCOLN

Thomas Lincoln was but six years old when he lost his father, and of the early life of the boy we have no knowledge but what can be learned of the general lot of his class and of the habits and modes of living then prevalent among the Kentucky pioneers. ''He grew up," says his son, the great Abraham Lincoln, "literally without education." After his father's death, Thomas Lincoln was, as WiUiam E. Curtis tells us, ''turned adrift, without home or care, for at ten years of age we find him 'a wandering laboring boy' who was left uneducated and supported himself by farm work and other menial employment, and learned the trades of carpenter and cabinetmaker. But he must have had good stuff in him, for when he was twenty-five years old he had saved enough from his wages to buy a farm in Hardin County. Local tradition, which, however, cannot always be trusted, represents him to have been 'an easy-going man, and slow to anger, but when roused a formidable adversary.' He was above the medium height, had a powerful frame, and, like his immortal son, had a wide local reputation as a wrestler."

MARRIAGE TO NANCY HANKS

In 1806 Thomas Lincoln, being then twentyeight years of age, was married to Nancy Hanks, who was a native of Virginia. The couple settled in what was then Hardin County, Ken-

ANCESTRY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 5

tucky. It does not appear that the parents of Miss Hanks ever removed to Kentucky, though others of the family did so. Of the history of her ancestry we have no definite particulars. Her position in life appears to have been not dissimilar to that of her husband. She has been described as ''a handsome young woman of lowly condition but possessing qualities of intellect and character above the average." As she died at an early age, having passed her days, from the time of her marriage, on obscure frontiers, few recollections of her remain. She was brought up from early years by an aunt.

At the time of her marriage Nancy Hanks was in her twenty-third year. William H. Herndon tells us that she was above the ordinary height in stature, weighed about one hundred and thirty pounds, was slenderly built, and had much the appearance of one inclined to consumption. Her skin was dark ; hair dark brown ; eyes gray and small ; forehead prominent ; face sharp and angular, with a marked expression of melancholy which fixed itself in the memory of every one who ever saw or knew her. Though her life was seemingly beclouded by a spirit of sadness, she was in disposition amiable and generally cheerful. "Mr. Lincoln himself," says Herndon, ''said to me in 1851, on receiving the news of his father's death, that whatever might be said of his parents, and however unpromising the early surroundings of his mother may have been, she was highly intellectual by nature, had a strong memory, acute judgment, and was cool and heroic. From a mental standpoint she no doubt rose above her surroundings, and had she lived, the stimulus of her nature would have accelerated lier son's success, and she would have been a much more ambitious prompter than his father ever was."

In the midst of her household cares she undertook to teach her husband to read and write, and also gave her children a start in learning. Of her the President, nearly half a century after her death, is said to have remarked to William H. Seward, ''All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother — blessings on her memory."

ABRAHAM AS AUTOBIOGRAPHER

Abraham Lincoln himself never manifested much interest in his genealogy. At one time he did give out a brief statement of matters concerning his ancestors because he was led to believe that it might be useful for campaign purposes in the great struggle that brought to him the Presidency. But at another time, when questioned on this head, we are told that he replied, "It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of me or my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence you will find in Gray's 'Elegy' : 'The short and simple annals of the poor.' That's my life, and that's all you or any one else can make out of it."

PERSONALITY OF THOMAS LINCOLN

Thomas Lincoln was not tall and thin, like Abraham, but comparatively short and stout, standing about five feet ten inches in his shoes. His hair was dark and coarse, his complexion brown, his face round and full, his eyes gray.

ANCESTRY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 7

and his nose large and prominent. He weighed, at different times, from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and ninety-six pounds. He was built so *'tight and compact," that Dennis Hanks declares he never could find the points of separation between his ribs, though he felt for them often. He was a little stoop-shouldered, and walked with a slow, halting step. But he was sinewy and brave, and, his habitually peaceable disposition once fairly overborne, was a tremendous man in a rough-and-tumble fight. He thrashed the monstrous bully of Breckinridge County in three minutes, and came off without a scratch.

His vagrant career had supplied him with an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes, which he told cleverly and well. He loved to sit about at "stores" or under shade-trees and ''spin yams" — a propensity that atoned for many sins and made him extremely popular. In politics he was a Democrat — a Jackson Democrat. In religion he was nothing at times, and a member of various denominations by turns — a Freewill Baptist in Kentucky, a Presbyterian in Indiana, and a Disciple — vulgarly called Campbellite — in Illinois. In this last communion he appears to have died.

THE MOTHER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of the President, is said to have been in her youth a woman of beauty. She was by nature refined and of far more than ordinary intellect. Her friends spoke of her as being a person of marked and decided character. She was unusually intelligent, reading all the books she could obtain, and was a woman of deep religious feeling, of exemplary character, and most tenderly devoted to her family. Her home indicated a degree of taste and a love of beauty exceptional in the wild settlement in which she lived, and, judging from her early death, it is probable that she was of a physique less hardy than that of most of those by whom she was surrounded. But in spite of this she had been reared where the very means of existence were to be obtained but by a constant struggle, and she had learned to use the rifle and the tools of the backwoods farmer, as well as the distaff, the cards, and the spinning wheel. She could not only kill the wild game of the woods, but she could also dress it, make of the skins clothes for her family and prepare the flesh for food. Hers was a strong, self-reliant spirit, which commanded the respect as well as the love of the rugged people among whom she lived.

THOMAS LINCOLN AND HIS WIFE

The following account of this interesting couple in the early days of their life together appears in the Reminiscences of Lincoln's Cousin and Playmate, Dennis Hanks, as written down by Mrs. Eleanor Atkinson, in 1889, and published in the American Magazine, February, 1908.

"Looks didn't count them days, nowhow. It was stren'th an' work an' daredevil. A lazy man or a coward was jist pizen, an' a spindlin' feller had to stay in the settlemints. The clearin's hadn't no use fur him. Tom was strong, an' he wasn't lazy nor afeerd o' nothin', but he was kind o' shif'less — couldn't git nothin' ahead, an' didn't keer putickalar. Lots o' them kind o' fellers in

ANCESTRY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 9

arly days, 'druther hunt an' fish, an' I reckon they had their use. They killed off the varmints an' made it safe fur other fellers to go into the woods with an ax.

"When Nancy married Tom he was workin' in a carpenter shop. It wasn't Tom's fault he couldn't make a iivin' by his trade. Thar was sca'cely any money in that kentry. Every man had to do his own tinkerin', an' keep everlastin'ly at work to git enough to eat. So Tom tuk up some land. It v/as mighty ornery land, but it was the best Tom could git, when he hadn't much to trade fur it.

"Pore? We was all pore, them days, but the Lincolns was porer than anybody. Choppin' trees an' grubbin' roots an' splittin' rails an' huntin' an' trappin' didn't leave Tom no time. . . . It was all he could do to git his fambly enough to eat and to kiver 'em. Nancy was turrible ashamed o' the way they lived, but she knowed Tom was doin' his best, an' she wasn't the pesterin' kind. She was purty as a pictur an' smart as you'd find 'em anywhere. She could read an' write. The Hankses was some smarter'n the Lincolns. Tom thought a heap o' Nancy, an' he was as good to her as he knowed how. He didn't drink or swear or play kyards or fight, an' them was drinkin', cussin', quarrelsome days. Tom was popylar, an' he could lick a bully if he had to. He jist couldn't git ahead, somehow."

CHAPTER II Birth and Early Life of Abraham Lincoln

It has been ascertained that about a year after his marriage Thomas Lincohi, actuated by a roving disposition, also by his inherited land-hunger, removed his family to a little piece of ground on which a clearing had been made and a cabin built, situated on the south branch of Nolin Creek, three miles from Hodgenville, now the county-seat of Larue County, Kentucky. According to Ward H. Lamon, who recorded so many interesting reminiscences of the President, it is not known what estate Thomas Lincoln had, or attempted to get, in this land. It is said that he bought it, but was unable to pay for it. It was very poor, and the landscape of which it formed a part was extremely desolate. It was then nearly destitute of timber, though since partially covered in spots by a young and stunted growth of post-oak and hickory. On every side the eye rested only upon weeds and low bushes, and a kind of grass that has been described as ''barren grass." It was, on the whole, as bad a piece of ground as there was in the neighborhood, and would hardly have sold for a dollar an acre. The general appearance of the surrounding country was not much better. A few small but pleasant streams — Nolin Creek and its tributaries — wandered through the valleys. The land was generally what is called "'rolling" — dead levels interspersed by little

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN ii

hillocks. Nearly all of it was arable ; but, except the margins of the watercourses, not much of it was sufficiently fertile to repay the labor of tillage. It had no grand, unviolated forests to allure the hunter, and no great bodies of deep and rich soils to tempt the husbandman. Here it was only by incessant labor and thrifty habits that an ordinary living could be wrung from the earth.

THE CABIN HOME

The family lived in a miserable cabin. It stood on a little knoll in the midst of a barren glade. Such was the mean and narrow tenement which sheltered the infancy of one of the greatest political chieftains of modern times. Near by, a ''romantic spring" gushed from beneath a rock, and sent forth a slender but silvery stream, meandering through those dull and unsightly plains. As it furnished almost the only pleasing feature in the melancholy desert through which it flowed, the place was called after it, ''Rock Spring Farm." After a while it occurred to the proprietor that a few trees would look well, and might even be useful, if planted in the vicinity of his bare house-yard. This enterprise he actually achieved ; and three decayed pear-trees, situated on the "edge" of what was formerly a ryefield, remained after him as the only memorials of him or his family to be seen about the premises. They were his sole permanent improvement.

In that solitary cabin, on this desolate spot, Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the most illustrious man of his century, was born, as already said, on the twelfth day of February, 1809.

A BETTER DWELLING-PLACE

The Lincolns remained on Nolin Creek till Abraham was four years old. They then removed to a place much more picturesque, and of far greater fertility. It was situated about six miles from Hodgenville, on Knob Creek, a clear stream falling into the Rolling Fork, a branch of the Salt River, a short distance above the present town of New Haven. Their new farm was well timbered and more hilly than that on Nolin Creek. It contained some rich valleys, which promised such excellent yields, that Lincoln bestirred himself most vigorously, and actually got into cultivation the whole of six acres, lying advantageously up and down the branch. This, however, was not all the work he did, for he still continued to potter occasionally at his trade ; but, no matter what he turned his hand to, his gains were always insignificant. He was satisfied with indifferent shelter, and a diet of ''corn-bread and milk" was all he asked. John Hanks naively observes, that ''happiness was the end of life with him." The land he now lived upon (two hundred and thirty-eight acres) he had pretended to buy from a Mr. Slater. The purchase must have been a mere speculation, with all the payments deferred, for the title remained in Lincoln but a single year. The deed was made to him September 2, 1813 ; and October 27, 1814, he conveyed two hundred acres to Charles Milton, leaving thirty-eight acres of the tract unsold. No public record discloses what he did with the remainder. If he retained any interest in it for the time, it was probably permitted to be sold for taxes. The last of his voluntary transactions, in

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN 13

regard to this land, took place two years before his removal to Indiana; after which he appears to have continued in possession as the tenant of Milton.

LINCOLN AT SCHOOL

In those days there were no common schools in that country. The principal reliance for acquiring the rudiments of learning was the same as that to which the peasant-poet of Ayrshire was indebted. Education was by no means disregarded, nor did young Lincoln, poor as were his opportunities, grow up an illiterate boy, as some have supposed. Competent teachers were accustomed to offer themselves then, as in later years, who opened private schools for a neighborhood, being supported by tuition-fees or subscription. During his boyhood days in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln attended, at different times, at least two schools of this description, of which he always retained clear and grateful recollections. One of these was kept by Zachariah Riney, whose influence was never wholly effaced from Lincoln's memory. Though this teacher was himself an ardent Catholic, he made no proselyting efforts in his school, and when any little religious ceremonies, or perhaps mere catechizing and the like, were to be gone through with, all Protestant children, of whom it is needless to say that young Abraham was one, were accustomed to retire, by permission or command. Riney was a man of excellent character, deep piety, and fairly educated. The still existing town of Rineyville, in Hardin County, is a tribute to his name.

Another teacher, on whose instructions the boy afterward attended while living in Kentucky, was named Caleb Hazel. His was also a neighborhood school, sustained by private patronage.

With the aid of these two schools, and with such further assistance as he received at home, no doubt Abraham Lincoln had become able to read well at the age of seven. That he was not a dull or inapt scholar, is manifest from his subsequent attainments. With the allurements of the rifle and the wild game that then abounded in the country, however, and with the meagre advantages he had in regard to books, it is certain that his perceptive faculties and his muscular powers were much more fully developed by exercise than his scholastic talents.

Abraham Lincoln's mother was persistent in her determination to educate her children, and although the father's enthusiasm was spasmodic and unreliable, still he would occasionally glow with pride in his educational plans for his bright, intelligent boy. At the age of forty-five Lincoln told Leonard Swett that the summuni bonum of his father's ambition was to give his boy a £rsfrate education, and that his ne plus ultra of such an education was to *'larn to cipher clean through the 'rithmetic."

While he lived in Kentucky young Lincoln never saw even the exterior of what was properly a church edifice. The religious services he attended were held either at a private dwelling, or in some log schoolhouse, or in the open grove.

nancy's "boy baby"

Dennis Hanks's account of the birth of his cousin Abraham is given in the most characteristic manner, as follows, by Eleanor Atkinson.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN 15

''Tom an' Nancy lived on a farm about two miles from us when Abe was born. I ricollect Tom comin' over to our house one cold mornin' in Feb'uary an' sayin' kind o' slow, 'Nancy's got a boy baby.'

"Mother got flustered an' hurried up 'er work to go over to look after the little feller, but I didn't have nothin' to wait fur, so I cut an' run the hull two mile to see my new cousin.

"You bet I was tickled to death. Babies wasn't as common as blackberries in the woods o' Kaintucky. Mother come over and washed him an' put a yaller flannen petticoat on him, an' cooked some dried berries with wild honey fur Nancy, an' slicked things up an' went home. An' that's all the nuss'n either of 'em got. . . .

"I rolled up in a b'ar skin an' slep' by the fireplace that night, so's I could see the little feller when he cried and Tom had to git up an' tend to him. Nancy let me hold him purty soon. Folks often ask me if Abe was a good-lookin' baby. Well, now, he looked just like any other baby, at fust — like red cherry pulp squeezed dry. An' he didn't improve none as be growed older. Abe never was much fur looks. I ricollect how Tom joked about Abe's long legs when he was toddlin' round the cabin. He growed out o' his clothes faster'n Nancy could make 'em.

"But he was mighty good comp'ny, solemn as a papoose, but mi^rest^^ in everythin'. An' he always did have fits o' cuttin' up. I've seen him when he was a little feller, settin' on a stool, starin' at a visitor. All of a sudden he'd bust out laughin' fit to kill. If he told us what he was laughin' at, half the time we couldn't see no joke. . . .

l6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN

"Abe never give Nancy no trouble after he could walk excep' to keep him in clothes. Most o' the time we went bar'foot. Ever wear a wet buckskin glove? Them moccasins wasn't no putection ag'inst the wet. Birch bark with hickory bark soles, strapped on over yarn socks, beat buckskin all holler, fur snow. Abe 'n' me got purty handy contrivin' things that way. An' Abe was right out in the woods, about as soon's he was weaned, fishin' in the crick, settin' traps fur rabbits an' muskrats, goin' on coon-hunts with Tom an' me an' the dogs, follerin' up bees to find bee trees, an' drappin' corn fur his pappy. Mighty interesfm' life fur a boy, but thar was a good many chances he wouldn't live to grow up.'*

LITTLE ABE SAVED FROM DROWNING

In his Best Lincoln Stories, ]. E. Gallaher publishes the following narrative :

'The only one of young Lincoln's playmates now living [1884] is an old man nearly a hundred years old, named Austin Gollaher, whose mind is bright and clear, and who never tires telling of the days Lincoln and he were 'little tikes' and played together. This old man, who yet lives in the log house in which he has always lived, a few miles from the old Lincoln place, tells entertaining stories about the President's boyhood."

'T once saved Lincoln's life," relates Mr. Gollaher. ''We had been going to school together one year ; but the next year we had no school, because there were so few scholars to attend, there being only about twenty in the school the year before.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN 17

''Consequently Abe and I had not much to do ; but as we did not go to school and our mothers were strict with us, we did not get to see each other very often. One Sunday morning my mother waked me up early, saying she was going to see Mrs. Lincoln, and that I could go along. Glad of the chance, I was soon dressed and ready to go. After my mother and I got there, Abe and I played all through the day.

"While we were wandering up and down the little stream called Knob Creek, Abe said : 'Right up there' — pointing to the east — 'we saw a covey of partridges yesterday. Let's go over.' The stream was too wide for us to jump across. Finally we saw a foot-log, and we concluded to try it. It was narrow, but Abe said, 'Let's coon it.'

"I went first and reached the other side all right. Abe went about half-way across, when he got scared and began trembling. I hollered to him, 'Don't look down nor up nor sideways, but look right at me and hold on tight !' But he fell ofif into the creek, and as the water was about seven or eight feet deep (I could not swim, and neither could Abe), I knew it would do no good for me to go in after him.

"So I got a stick — a long water-sprout — and held it out to him. He came up, grabbing with both hands, and I put the stick into his hands. He clung to it, and I pulled him out on the bank, almost dead. I got him by the arms and shook him well, and then I rolled him on the ground, when the water poured out of his mouth.

"He was all right very soon. We promised each other that we would never tell anybody about it, and never did for years. I never told any one of it until after Lincoln was killed."

Abraham's first farm work

The boy Lincoln, as Ida M. Tarbell, in her well-known biography, tells us, learned to know his father's farm from line to line, and years after, when President of the United States, he recalled in a conversation at the White House, in the presence of Dr. J. J. Wright of Emporia, Kan., the arrangement of the fields and an incident of his own childish experience as a farmer's son. ''Mr. President," one of the visitors had asked, *1iow would you like when the war is over to visit your old home in Kentucky?" 'T would like it very much," Mr. Lincoln replied. "I remember that old home very well. Our farm was composed of three fields. It lay in the valley surrounded by high hills and deep gorges. Sometimes when there came a big rain in the hills the water would come down through the gorges and spread all over the farm. The last thing that I remember of doing there was one Saturday afternoon ; the other boys planted the corn in what we called the big field — it contained seven acres — and I dropped the pumpkin-seed. I dropped two seeds in every other hill and every other row. The next Sunday morning there came a big rain in the hills ; it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming through the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin-seeds and all clear off the field."

Chapter III

Unsatisfactory results of his years of toil on the lands of Nolin Creek, or a restless spirit of adventure and fondness for more stirring pioneer experiences than this region continued to afiford, or, as some say, his inherited land-hunger, led Thomas Lincoln, now nearly forty years of age, with a son beginning to be an efficient helper in the labors of the farm, to seek a new place of abode beyond the Ohio River.

THE WEST IN 1816

It is scarcely possible to conceive the peculiar conditions of what was the far western portion of the country when the Lincolns made this removal. Enough, however, can be realized to give us some understanding of Abraham's continual privations and struggles. In the first place, we must remember that he lived in the woods. The West of that day was not wild in the sense of being wicked, criminal, ruffian. Morally, if not intellectually, the people of that region would compare well with the rest of the country, then or now. Although there was little schooling and no literary training, the woodsman had an education of his own. The region was wild in the sense that it was almost uninhabited and untilled. The forests, extending from the mountains on the east to the prairies in the west, were almost unbroken and were the abode of wild birds and beasts.