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POO aK An bs chet thal bdelo Ls joy fhe Meu. ee a Care fore “4 Oa eae Praise tok Keg»
Photographed  about  i860  by  llesler,  Ch; 
Engraved  by  T.Johnson,  from  the  original  negative  owned  by  George  B.  Ayres,  Esq.,  Philadelphia. 
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The  Century  Magazine. 
Vol.  XXXIII.  NOVEMBER,  1886.  No.  1. 
ABRAHAM    LINCOLN  :    A    HISTORY.* 
By  John  G.  Nicolay  and  John  Hay,  Private  Secretaries  to  the  President. 
EDITORIAL    PREFACE. 
HE  CENTURY  MAGAZINE  has  never  entered  upon  a  mtore  important 
enterprise,  nor  one  in  which  we  have  been  surer  of  the  sympathy  and 
support  of  the  public,  than  in  engaging  to  present  in  these  pages  the  first 
full  and  authoritative  biography  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  together  with  a 
history  of  the  times  in  which  he  lived.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  explain 
that  this  long-expected  history  is  by  no  means  solely  a  sifting  and  re- 
editing  of  already  printed  records  and  memorials.  Its  originality  is,  how- 
ever, especially  notable  in  its  account  of  Lincoln's  administration,  in 
dealing  with  which  will  be  given  to  the  world  important  details  that  have  hitherto  remained 
unrevealed,  in  order  that  they  might  first  appear  in  their  proper  connection  in  this  monu- 
mental work. 
The  advantages  enjoyed  by  the  writers  of  this  history  are  not  only  incomparably  greater 
than  those  possessed  by  any  predecessors,  but  they  are  also  beyond  the  reach  of  any  future 
historian.  Both  of  these  biographers  grew  up  in  the  same  region  with  Mr.  Lincoln;  they 
were  intimate  from  boyhood  with  his  friends  and  companions.  Mr.  Nicolay  took  charge  of 
his  correspondence  before  his  election  to  the  Presidency,  and  the  very  first  commission 
Lincoln  signed  as  President  was  that  of  Mr.  Nicolay  to  be  his  official  Private  Secretary. 
He  held  this  position  throughout  Mr.  Lincoln's  term  of  office,  and  enjoyed  his  closest 
intimacy  and  confidence.  Mr.  Hay,  like  Mr.  Nicolay,  accompanied  the  President  from 
Springfield  to  Washington,  where  he  remained  several  years  as  Assistant  Secretary  ;  he  then 
entered  the  army  as  an  Assistant  Adjutant-General  of  Volunteers,  and  after  a  brief  period  of  staff 
service  was  ordered  back  to  Washington  and  assigned  to  duty  as  aide-de-camp  to  the  Presi- 
dent, where  he  remained  till  the  war  ended.  One  of  them,  and  generally  both,  were  on  duty 
at  Mr.  Lincoln's  side  every  day  from  i860  to  1865  ;  Mr.  Nicolay  was  his  official  medium 
of  communication  with  Congress  and  the  Cabinet ;  both  were  continually  employed  by 
him  in  delicate  and  important  missions  to  every  part  of  the  country ;  both  stood  beside  him 
at  his  two  inaugurations ;  one  saw  him  die. 
Daring  all  these  years  of  official  service  at  the  Executive  Mansion,  the  authors  cherished 
the  idea  of  writing  this  history.  At  an  age  when  the  faculties  of  memory  and  observation 
are  at  their  best,  they  made  frequent  notes  and  memoranda  of  important  events  occurring 
about  them.  The  President  was  himself  aware  of  their  intention,  and  encouraged  and 
assisted  them  in  their  work.  Some  of  his  most  precious  manuscripts  were  given  them  by 
his  own  hand.  Their  notes  and  memoranda  taken  during  the  war  fill  several  manuscript 
volumes,  the  value  of  which,  from  an  historical  point  of  view,  is  inestimable. 
After  the  war  was  over,  and  the  triumph  of  the  national  arms  had  received  its  pathetic 
*  Copyright  by  J.  G.  Nicolay  and  John  Hay,  18S6.    All  rights  reserved. 
Vol.  XXXIII.— i*.
4  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN: 
and  tragical  consecration  in  the  martyrdom  of  the  President,  they  did  not  take  advantage  of 
the  excitement  of  the  hour  to  throw  upon  the  world  a  hasty  and  ill-digested  compilation  to 
meet  the  temporary  demand.  After  spending  five  years  in  Europe  in  the  public  service,  they 
returned  to  this  country  with  their  impression  of  the  magnitude  of  the  work,  which  they 
regarded  as  assigned  to  them,  broadened  and  deepened  by  larger  acquaintance  with  the 
world.  For  the  last  sixteen  years  they  have  given  most  of  their  time  to  the  collection  and 
arrangement  of  the  enormous  material  at  their  disposition.  In  the  first  place,  all  the  manu- 
scripts, of  whatever  nature,  belonging  to  the  estate  of  Mr.  Lincoln  were  absolutely  and 
unreservedly  placed  in  their  hands  by  the  Honorable  Robert  T.  Lincoln,  the  only  surviving 
member  of  the  President's  family.  In  addition  to  this,  they  sought  and  obtained  access  to 
the  private  papers  and  correspondence  of  most  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  Cabinet.  Being  on  terms 
of  intimacy  with  all  the  leading  statesmen  and  generals  of  the  time,  they  were  afforded  by 
them  every  possible  assistance  in  the  elucidation  of  difficult  points.  Their  residence  in 
Washington,  Mr.  Nicolay  as  Marshal  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  Mr.  Hay  as  Assistant  Sec- 
retary of  State,  brought  them  into  constant  contact  with  the  most  authoritative  and  valua- 
ble sources  of  information.  They  have  used  all  these  opportunities  with  the  utmost  assiduity. 
They  have  also  profited  by  the  vast  quantity  of  reminiscences,  letters,  and  newspaper  articles 
which  have  recently  been  printed  in  regard  to  Lincoln  and  his  times.  They  have  considered 
no  chapter  of  their  work  completed  until  it  should  be  printed,  and  have  held  themselves 
ready  to  accept  and  use  every  new  fact  of  importance,  from  whatever  source  it  might  come, 
whether  it  confirmed  or  conflicted  with  opinions  previously  entertained. 
In  the  course  of  their  work,  besides  the  mass  of  manuscript  archives  in  all  the  depart- 
ments, they  have  consulted  thousands  of  printed  volumes.  Through  the  kindness  of  four 
successive  Secretaries  of  War,  they  have  had  free  and  constant  access  to  the  vast  accumula- 
tion of  military  reports,  from  both  Union  and  Confederate  officers,  in  the  War  Depart- 
ment, and  Colonel  Robert  N.  Scott  has  given  them  the  benefit  of  his  friendly  and  intelligent 
cooperation. 
In  determining  the  scope  and  character  of  their  work,  the  authors  were  governed  by  two 
simple  ideas.  The  first,  which  was  biographical,  was  to  draw  the  portrait  and  character  of 
the  man  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  in  doing  this  succinctly  to  narrate  his  actions.  The  second 
was  historical,  and  required  them  to  relate  the  national  events  of  which  he  was  the  personal 
and  official  center  and  the  inspiring  and  directing  leader.  These  chapters,  therefore,  are  not 
mere  books  of  anecdote  and  reminiscence ;  they  are  blended  biography  and  history,  written 
with  all  the  literary  skill  of  which  the  authors  are  capable  (a  skill  abundantly  proved  in  their 
other  writings),  and  compiled  with  all  the  historical  accuracy  which  their  unusual  command 
of  facilities  and  opportunities  made  possible.  Their  field  embraced  that  picturesque  period 
of  Western  pioneer  life  in  which  Mr.  Lincoln  was  born  and  grew  to  manhood;  then  the 
stirring  ten  years'  agitation  during  which  the  nation  went  through  the  severe  and  bitter 
struggle  over  the  slavery  question,  and  which  brought  on  the  rebellion ;  finally,  the  intensely 
moving  drama  of  the  American  civil  war.  When,  however,  the  military  portion  of  this 
history  is  reached  in  magazine  publication,  care  will  be  taken  to  avoid  as  much  as  possible 
the  repetition  of  details  already  given  in  The  Century's  war  series,  while  fully  presenting 
that  part  of  the  military  narrative  in  which  is  explained  the  relation  of  the  President  to 
these  events. 
Giving  their  plan  ample  breadth  to  cover  this  entire  field,  the  authors  have,  nevertheless, 
been  careful  to  confine  it  to  such  principal  personages  and  events  as  might  find  place  in  a 
single  historical  picture,  composed  with  entire  dramatic  unity,  with  related  and  dependent 
incidents,  and  with  continuity  and  proper  sequence  of  narrative.  Under  their  lucid  state- 
ment and  explanation,  the  great  historical  drama  of  the  American  rebellion  becomes 
coherent  and  intelligible,  permitting  the  reader  to  understand  its  beginnings  and  to  follow 
its  development  through  sectional  rivalry  and  jealousy  to  conspiracy,  disunion,  and  insur- 
rection ;  to  civil  war;  to  the  mighty  conflict  of  the  greatest  of  modern  armies  in  march, 
manoeuvre,  siege,  and  battle.  Finally,  at  the  moment  when  the  Union  armies  triumph,  and 
their  victory  ordains  that  the  Constitution  shall  stand  and  the  nation  remain  one,  the  story 
comes  back  to  that  crowning  catastrophe  of  the  drama  which,  with  a  climax  as  emotional 
as  any  creation  of  fancy,  once  more  lifts  the  personal  above  the  historic  interest  and 
records  a  sorrow  extending  far  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  nation,  and  touching  the 
civilized  world  not  alone  with  regret  at  the  loss  of  a  benefactor  to  humanity,  but  as  if  with 
the  bereavement  of  a  near  and  dear  friend. 
Editor  of  The  Century.
A    HISTORY. 
AUTHORS     PREFACE. 
GENERATION  born  since  Abraham  Lincoln  died  has  already  reached 
manhood  and  womanhood.  Vet  there  are  millions  still  living  who 
sympathized  with  him  in  his  noble  aspirations,  who  labored  with  him  in 
his  toilsome  life,  and  whose  hearts  were  saddened  by  his  tragic  death. 
It  is  the  almost  unbroken  testimony  of  his  contemporaries  that  by  virtue  of 
certain  high  traits  of  character,  in  certain  momentous  lines  of  purpose  and 
achievement,  he  was  incomparably  the  greatest  man  of  his  time.  The 
deliberate  judgment  of  those  who  knew  him  has  hardened  into  tradition; 
for  although  but  twenty-one  years  have  passed  since  he  fell  by  the  bullet  of  the  assassin,  the 
tradition  is  already  complete.  The  voice  of  hostile  faction  is  silent,  or  unheeded;  even  criti- 
cism is  gentle  and  timid.  If  history  had  said  its  last  word,  if  no  more  were  to  be  known  of 
him  than  is  already  written,  his  fame,  however  lacking  in  definite  outline,  however  distorted 
by  fable,  would  survive  undiminished  to  the  latest  generations.  The  blessings  of  an  enfran- 
chised race  would  forever  hail  him  as  their  liberator  ;  the  nation  would  acknowledge  him  as 
the  mighty  counselor  whose  patient  courage  and  wisdom  saved  the  life  of  the  Republic  in 
its  darkest  hour;  and  illuminating  his  proud  eminence  as  orator,  statesman,  and  ruler,  there- 
would  forever  shine  around  his  memory  the  halo  of  that  tender  humanity  and  Christian  charity 
in  which  he  walked  among  his  fellow-countrymen  as  their  familiar  companion  and  friend. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  with  any  thought  of  materially  adding  to  his  already  accomplished 
renown  that  we  have  written  the  work  which  we  now  offer  to  our  fellow-citizens.  But  each 
age  owes  to  its  successors  the  truth  in  regard  to  its  own  annals.  The  young  men  who  have 
been  born  since  Sumter  was  fired  on  have  a  right  to  all  their  elders  know  of  the  important 
events  they  came  too  late  to  share  in.  The  life  and  the  fame  of  Lincoln  will  not  have  their 
legitimate  effect  of  instruction  and  example  unless  the  circumstances  among  which  he 
lived  and  found  his  opportunities  are  placed  in  their  true  light  before  the  men  who  never 
saw  him. 
To  write  the  life  of  this  great  American  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  his  relations  to  the 
times  in  which  he  moved,  the  stupendous  issues  he  controlled,  the  remarkable  men  by  whom 
he  was  surrounded,  has  been  the  purpose  which  the  authors  have  diligently  pursued  for 
many  years.  We  can  say  nothing  of  the  result  of  our  labor ;  only  those  who  have  been 
similarly  employed  can  appreciate  the  sense  of  inadequate  performance  with  which  we 
regard  what  we  have  accomplished.  We  can  only  claim  for  our  work  that  we  have  devoted 
to  it  sixteen  years  of  almost  unremitting  assiduity ;  that  we  have  neglected  no  means  in  our 
power  to  ascertain  the  truth ;  that  we  have  rejected  no  authentic  facts  essential  to  a  candid 
story ;  that  we  have  had  no  theory  to  establish,  no  personal  grudge  to  gratify,  no  unavowed 
objects  to  subserve.  We  have  aimed  to  write  a  sufficiently  full  and  absolutely  honest  history 
of  a  great  man  and  a  great  time ;  and  although  we  take  it  for  granted  that  we  have  made 
mistakes,  that  we  have  fallen  into  such  errors  and  inaccuracies  as  are  unavoidable  in  so 
large  a  work,  we  promise  there  shall  not  be  found  a  line  in  all  these  chapters  dictated  by 
malice  or  unfairness. 
Our  desire  to  have  this  work  placed  under  the  eyes  of  the  greatest  possible  number  of 
readers  induced  us  to  accept  the  generous  offer  of  The  Century  Magazine  to  print  it  first  in 
these  pages.  In  this  way  it  will  receive  the  intelligent  criticism  of  a  million  people,  con- 
temporaries of  the  events  narrated,  and  we  expect  to  profit  by  the  suggestions  and  corrections 
which  such  a  method  of  publication  invites.  Moreover,  as  we  have  endeavored  to  write 
this  history  with  a  purpose  of  absolute  fairness  to  every  party  and  every  section  of  the 
country,  we  ardently  desire  that,  by  its  wide  dissemination,  it  may  contribute  to  the  growth 
and  maintenance  throughout  all  our  borders  of  that  spirit  of  freedom  and  nationality  for 
which  Abraham  Lincoln  lived  and  died. 
A^^^^y
LINCOLN    AS   PIONEER. 
LINEAGE. 
IN  1780  Abraham  Lincoln,  a  member  of  a 
respectable  and  well-to-do  family  in  Rock- 
ingham County,  Virginia,  started  westward  to 
establish  himself  with  his  wife  and  five  chil- 
dren in  the  newly  explored  country  of  Ken- 
tucky. He  was  a  man  of  some  substance, 
possessing  at  one  time  a  large  and  fertile  tract 
of  land  about  eight  miles  north  of  Harrison- 
burg. It  seemed  for  many  years  impossible 
to  ascertain  how  he  lost,  or  what  were  the 
motives  which  induced  him  to  abandon,  this 
valuable  property.  The  records  belonging  to 
that  portion  of  the  family  which  remained  in 
Virginia  were  destroyed  in  the  civil  war,  and 
the  branch  which  moved  to  Kentucky  passed 
through  a  period  of  illiteracy  which,  though  it 
was  brief,  interrupted  the  memory  and  record 
of  their  descent.  There  are  hundreds  of  fam- 
ilies in  the  West,  bearing  historic  names  and 
probably  descended  from  well-known  houses 
in  the  East  or  in  England,  which,  by  passing 
through  one  or  two  generations  of  ancestors 
who  could  not  read  or  write,  have  lost  their 
connection  with  the  past  as  effectually  as  if  a 
deluge  had  intervened  between  the  last  cen- 
tury and  this.  Even  the  patronymic  is  fre- 
quently distorted  beyond  recognition  by  slov- 
enly pronunciation  during  the  years  when 
reading  and  writing  were  lost  arts,  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  belong- 
ing to  the  same  stock  with  the  President  whose 
names  are  spelled  "  Linkhorn  "  and  "  Link- 
hern." 
All  that  was  known  of  this  emigrant  Abra- 
ham 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 
the  investigations  of  several  eager  genealogists 
have  since  established   a  strong  probability 
that  he  was  descended  from  the  Massachusetts 
family  of  the  same  name,  who  settled  about 
the  year  1638  at  Hingham,  and  who  came 
originally  from  the  county  of  Norfolk  in  the 
old  country.  The  first  ancestor  of  this  line 
of  whom  we  have  knowledge  was  Samuel  Lin- 
coln, of  Norwich,  England;  he, dying  in  Hing- 
ham, Massachusetts,  left  a  son,  Mordecai, 
whose  son,  of  the  same  name,  removed  to  Mon- 
mouth, New  Jersey,  and  thence  to  Amity 
township,  now  a  part  of  Berks  County,  Penn- 
sylvania, where  he  died  about  1735,  fifty 
years  old.  From  a  copy  of  his  will,  recorded 
in  the  office  of  the  Register  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  established  himself  in  Rockingham 
County,  Virginia,  and  had  a  family  of  sons,  to 
whom  he  gave  the  names  which  continually 
recur  in  the  history  of  the  tribe,  Abraham, 
the  pioneer  mentioned  above,  Isaac,  Jacob, 
Thomas,  and  John.  Jacob  and  John  remained 
in  Virginia;*  the  former  was  a  soldier  in  the 
War  of  the  Revolution,  and  took  part  as  lieu- 
tenant in  a  Virginia  regiment  at  the  siege  of 
Yorktown.f  Isaac  went  to  a  place  on  the 
Holston  River  in  Tennessee;  Thomas  followed 
his  brother  to  Kentucky,  lived  and  died  there, 
and  his  children  then  emigrated  to  Missouri. 
But  with  the  one  memorable  exception,  none  of 
the  brothers  or  their  descendants  achieved  the 
slightest  distinction.  Even  the  great  fame  and 
conspicuousnessof  the  President  brought  none 
of  his  kindred  to  the  light,  except  his  cousin, 
Robert  Lincoln,  of  Hancock  County,  Illinois, 
who  became  a  captain  and  quartermaster  of 
volunteers.  The  rest  sank  into  obscurity, 
where  it  is  impossible,  and  would  be  useless, 
to  follow  them. 
*  Soon  after  Mr.  Lincoln  arrived  in  Washington  in 
1861,  he  received  the  following  letter  from  one  of  his 
Virginia  kinsmen,  the  only  communication  which  ever 
came  from  them.  It  was  written  on  paper  adorned 
with  a  portrait  of  Jefferson  Davis,  and  was  inclosed  in 
an  envelope  emblazoned  with  the  Confederate  flag  : 
To  Abraham  Lincoln.  Esq  ,  President  of  the  Northern 
Confederacy  : 
SIR, —  Having  just  returned  from  a  trip  through  Vir- 
ginia, North  Carolina,  and  Tennessee,  permit  me  to 
inform  you  that  you  will  get  whipped  out  of  your 
boots.  To-day  I  met  a  gentleman  from  Anna,  Illinois, 
and  although  he  voted  for  you  he  says  that  the  moment 
your  troops  leave  Cairo  they  will  get  the  spots  knocked 
out  of  them.  My  dear  sir,  these  are  facts  which  time  will 
prove  to  be  correct. 
I  am,  sir,  with  every  consideration,  yours  respectfully, 
Minor  Lincoln, 
Of  the  Staunton  stock  of  Lincolns. 
t  Lamon,  page  8.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
r  It  was  ten  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  in- 
timate 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  asso- 
ciation with  the  famous  Daniel  Boone  that  Abraham 
Lincoln  went  to  Kentucky.  The  families  had  for  a 
century  been  closely  allied.  By  the  will  of  Mordecai 
Lincoln,  to  which  reference  has  been  made,  his  "loving 
friend  and  neighbor"  George  Boone  was  made  a  trus- 
tee to  assist  his  widow  in  the  care  of  the  property. 
Squire  Boone,  the  father  of  Daniel,  was  one  of  the 
appraisers  who  made  the  inventory  of  Mordecai  Lin- 
coln's estate.  One  of  the  numerous  Abraham  Lincolns 
married  a  Miss  Anna  Boone  in  1760.*  The  intercourse 
between  the  families  was  kept  up  after  the  Boones  had 
removed  to  North  Carolina  and  John  Lincoln  had 
gone  to  Virginia.  Abraham  Lincoln,  son  of  John,  and 
grandfather  of  the  President,  was  married  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 
A  letter  from  David  J.  Lincoln,  of  Birdsboro,  Berks  County,  Pennsylvania,  to  the  writers,  says,  "My  grand- 
father, Abraham  Lincoln,  was  married  to  Anna  Boone,  a  first  cousin  of  Daniel  Boone,  July  10,  1760.'' 
VIEW    OF    THE    KENTUCKY    FROM    BOONE'S    GRAVE.
DANIEL  BOONE  :   ENGRAVED  BY  T.  JOHNSON  FROM  THE  PAINTING  BY  SULLY,  IN  POSSESSION  OF  FRANK  M.  ETTING,  ESQ.,  PHILADELPHIA. 
<^l>-e^y 
at^t^^t-^ 
A. 
O"0-}^C__ 
[FAC-SIMILR  FROM  THE  FIELD-BOOK  OF  DANIEL  BOONE  RECORDING 
THE  LINCOLN  CLAIM  ON  LICKING  RIVER.  FROM  THE  ORIGINAL 
IN     POSSESSION     OF     LYMAN     C.     DRAPER,    ESQ.,    MADISON,    WIS.]
LINCOLN  AS  PJONEER. 
who  was  then  in  the  prime  of  his  manhood, 
and  in  the  midst  of  those  achievements  which 
will  forever  render  him  one  of  the  most  pic- 
turesque 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  be- 
gun some  ten  years  before  Lincoln  set  out  to 
follow  his  trail.  In  1769  he  made  his  memo- 
rable 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,"  he  says,  "  were  more 
frequent  than  I  have  seen  cattle  in  the  settle- 
ments, 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,  how- 
ever, 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?"  They  replied,"  White 
men  and  friends."  They  proved  to  be  Squire 
Boone  and  another  adventurer  from  North 
Carolina.  The  young  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  pleas- 
ures and  dangers.  Their  two  companions 
were  soon  waylaid  and  killed,  and  the  Boones 
spent  the  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 
settlements  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  loneli- 
ness, 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  came  to  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  pas- 
sion, with  which  I  had  the  greatest  reason  to 
be  afflicted."  After  his  brother's  return,  for  a 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 2. 
year  longer  they  hunted  in  these  lovely  wilds, 
and  then  returned  to  Yadkin   to  Lrin^  their 
families  to  the  new  domain.    They  made  the 
long  ride  back,  five  hundred  miles,  in   j, 
and  safety. 
For  some  time  after  this  Boone  took  no  con- 
spicuous part  in  the  settlement  of  Kentucky. 
The  expedition  with  which  he  left  the  Yadkin 
in  1773  met  with  a  terrible  disaster  near  Cum- 
berland Gap,  in  which  his  eldest  son  and  five 
more  young  men  were  killed  by  Indians,  and 
the  whole  party,  discouraged  by  the  blow,  re- 
tired to  the  safer  region  of  the  Clinch  River. 
In  the  mean  time  the  dauntless  speculator 
Henderson  had  begun  his  occupation  with  all 
the  pomp  of  viceroyalty.  Harrodsburg  had 
been  founded,  and  corn  planted,  and  a  flour- 
ishing colony  established  at  the  Falls  of  the 
Ohio.  In  1774  Boone  was  called  upon  by  the 
Governor  of  Virginia  to  escort  a  party  of  sur- 
veyors through  the  State,  and  on  his  return  was 
given  the  command  of  three  garrisons;  and 
for  several  years  thereafter  the  history  of 
Kentucky  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  Canada,  to  show  the  Long- Knife 
chieftains  of  King  George  that  they  could 
also  exhibit  trophies  of  memorable  prowess, 
but  they  refused  to  give  him  up  even  to  their 
British  allies.  In  no  quality  of  wise  wood- 
craft 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  fight- 
ing and  only  fought  for  peace.  In  council  and 
in  war  he  was  equally  valuable.  His  advice 
was  never  rejected  without  disaster,  nor  fol- 
lowed 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  Boonesborough  he  took  deliber- 
ate 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  with  his  own  hand,  and  all  this 
without  malice  and,  strangest  of  all,  without  in- 
curring 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  ter- 
rible work  was  the  wisdom  and  valor  with  which 
he  had  partly  retrieved  a  disaster  he  foresaw
LINCOLN  AS   PIONEER. 
Lanl-Qffice  Trv&furj/  WJ£%%ft<N79    N^^| 
|Sa  f&  principal  Surveyor  of  mjf  County  wkfiin  tfjc  Com-  |S 
IS     rilfffiil  monwealtS  of  Virginia.  If 
"THIS  iliall  be  your  WARRANT  to  Sur- 
*      vey^nd  l:r/  off  in  one  or  mom ■Survc 
for  ^^^4Un^^^  ^f^Pt^  iC^ 
urveys,  ^ 
hSjHcira  cr  Affigns,  fc| 
the  Quantity  of  £4M^&<1kI 4&&%^/±~*:7i 
Acres  jof  Land,    due  unto -the  faid 
p.jn  Conftderation  of  the  Sum  q£$^  ^ 
^j«  current  Money  jAid  into  the  pubiick,  Treafiny;  the  Payment  || 
SfcjplB thereof  to  the  Tn&afurer  hath  been  duly  certified  bv  the  Auditors  £§ 
^■g^  of  pubiick  Accounts,  and  their  Certificate  re'eei  ed.  into  tKe  taad  &H 
«K Office-  GIVEN  under  my  Hand,  and  the  Seal  of  the  laid  || 
g!l^  Office,  on  this  ^iht^r^- — —Day  of  ^^b  <hs>  cs*u-in  the  fg$ 
KM  Year  One  Thoufa  id  Seven  Hu'ndrcd  and  ^cf  ^fe 
LAND    WARRANT    ISSUED    TO    ABRAHAM    LINKHORN     (LINCOLN),    SLIGHTLY    REDUCED.      ORIGINAL    IN    POSSESSION    OF   R.    T. 
DURRETT,    ESQ.,    LOUISVILLE,    KY.       (SEE     OPPOSITE     PAGE.) 
but  was  powerless  to  prevent, — when  it  became 
his  duty,  as  senior  surviving  officer  of  the  forces, 
to  report  the  affair  to  Governor  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  have 
justly  claimed  some  notice.  He  was  thinking 
solely  of  the  public  good,  saying,  "  I  have  en- 
couraged the  people  in  this  country  all  that  I 
could,  but  I  can  no  longer  justify  them  or  my- 
self to  risk  our  lives  here  under  such  extraor- 
dinary hazards."  He  therefore  begs  his  Ex- 
cellency to  take  immediate  measures  for  relief. 
During  the  short  existence  of  Henderson's 
legislature,  he  was  a  member  of  it,  and  not  the 
*  In  the  possession  of  Colonel  Reuben  T.  Durrett, 
of  Louisville,  Kentucky,  a  gentleman  who  has  made  the 
early  history  of  his  State  a  subject  of  careful  and  intel- 
ligent study,  and  to  whom  we  are  greatly  indebted  for 
valuable  information  in  regard  to  the  settlement  of 
the  Lincolns  in  Kentucky.  He  gives  the  following 
list  of  lands  in  that  State  owned  by  Abraham  Lin- 
coln : 
1.  Four  hundred  acres  on  Long  Run,  a  branch  of 
Floyd's  Fork,  in  Jefferson  County,  entered  May  29th, 
1780,  and  surveyed  May  7th,  1785. 
2.  Eight  hundred  acres  on  Green  River,  near  Green 
least  useful  one.    Among  his  measures   was 
one  for  the  protection  of  game. 
Everything  we  know  of  the  emigrant  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  goes  to  show  that  it  was  under 
the  auspices  of  this  most  famous  of  our 
pioneers  that  he  set  out  from  Rockingham 
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  rec- 
ords show  him  to  have  been  the  possessor  of 
a  domain  of  some  seventeen  hundred  acres. 
There  is  still  in  existence*  the  original  warrant, 
River  Lick,  entered  June  7th,  1 780,  and  surveyed  Oc- 
tober 1 2th,  1784. 
3.  Five  hundred  acres  in  Campbell  County,  date  of 
entry  not  known,  but  surveyed  September  27th,  1798, 
and  patented  June  30th,  1799  —  the  survey  and  patent 
evidently  following  his  entry  after  his  death.  It  is 
possible  that  this  was  the  five-hundred-acre  tract  found 
in  Boone's  field-book,  in  the  possession  of  Lyman  C. 
Draper,  Esq.,  Secretary  of  the  Wisconsin  Historical 
Society,  and  erroneously  supposed  by  some  to  have 
been  in  Mercer  County.  Boone  was  a  deputy  of  Col- 
onel Thomas  Marshall,  Surveyor  of  Fayette  County.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
ii 
dated  March  4th,  1780,  for  four  hundred  acres 
of  land,  for  which  the  pioneer  had  paid  "  into 
the  publick  Treasury  one  hundred  and  sixty 
pounds  current  money,"  and  a  copy  of  the 
surveyor's  certificate,*  giving  the  metes  and 
bounds  of  the  property  on  Floyd's  Fork,  which 
remained  for  many  years  in  the  hands  of  Mor- 
decai  Lincoln,  the  pioneer's  eldest  son  and 
heir.    The  name  was  misspelled  "  Linkhorn  " 
Washington  had  acquired  claims  and  patents 
to  the  amount  of  thirty  or  forty  thousand 
acres  of  land  in  the  West;  Franklin  and  the 
Lees  were  also  large  owners  of  these  specula- 
tive 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, 
(? cottt&t  rtfit    Xn^ayi/t^o^  A£a4^a^v^o    a/o-uJ-Ttiz* 
a. 
„  1/5/5   /4  Mid i'lfr    u^ 
^6    *_,       C^W  C6y 
/H<[/&'c*^  M 
y/.e 
cp 
surveyor's   certificate    (slightly   reduced),    taken   from   record   book    "b,"  page   60,  IN   THE   OFFICE   OF 
JEFFERSON    COUNTY,    KENTUCKY. 
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  Governor  Spottswood 
had  crossed  the  Alleghanies  and  returned  to 
establish  in  a  Williamsburg  tavern  that  fan- 
tastic order  of  nobility  which  he  called  the 
Knights  of  the  Golden  Horseshoe,f  and,  with 
a  worldly  wisdom  which  was  scarcely  consistent 
with  these  mediaeval  affectations,  to  press  upon 
the  attention  of  the  British  Government  the 
building  of  a  line  of  frontier  forts  to  guard  the 
Ohio  River  from  the  French.  Many  years  after 
him  the  greatest  of  all  Virginians  crossed  the 
mountains  again,  and  became  heavily  inter- 
ested 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. 
*  Jefferson  County  Records. 
t  Their  motto  was  Sic  jurat  transcendere  monies. 
or  through  purchase  from  adventurers  or  In- 
dian 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  pour- 
ing over  the  passes  of  the  mountains  into 
the  green  and  fertile  valleys  of  Kentucky  and 
Tennessee.  They  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  of  note  in  the  historv  of  Kentuckv.
LIXCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
The  labors  of  Henderson  and  the  Transyl- 
vania Company  had  begun  to  bear  fruit  in 
extensive  plantations  and  a  connected  system 
of  forts.  The  land  laws  of  Kentucky  had  re- 
duced 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  Boonesborough 
against  the  Shawnees,  and  the  capture  of 
Kaskaskia  and  Vincennes  by  the  brilliant 
audacity  of  George  Rogers  Clarke,  had  brought 
the  region  prominently  before  the  attention 
of  the  Atlantic  States,  and  had  turned  in  that 
LONG     RUN"     BAPTIST     MEETING-HOUSE,    BUILT     ABOUT     1797    ON 
THE     LAND     OF     ABRAHAM     LINKHORN     (LINCOLN).       DRAWING 
FROM     MEMORY,     IN     POSSESSION    OF    R.    T.    DURRETT,    ESQ. 
direction  the  restless  and  roving  spirit  which 
is  always  found  in  communities  at  periods 
when  great  emigrations  are  a  need  of  civiliza- 
tion. Up  to  this  time  few  persons  had  crossed 
the  mountains  except  hunters,  trappers,  and 
explorers, —  men  who  came  merely  to  kill  In- 
dians or  game,  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  Lin- 
coln 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  sur- 
veyed by  Captain  Bullitt  seven  years  before,  and 
in  May  the  Legislature  of  Virginia  passed  alaw 
for  the  incorporation  of  the  town  of  Louisville, 
then  containing  some  six  hundred  inhabitants. 
At  the  same  session  a  law  was  passed  confis- 
cating the  property  of  certain  British  subjects 
for  the  endowment  of  an  institution  of  learn- 
ing in  Kentucky,  "it  being  the  interest  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  neigh- 
borhood and  a  savage  intercourse  might 
otherwise  render  them  unfriendly  to  science." 
This  was  the  origin  of  the  Transylvania  Uni- 
versity of  Lexington,  which  rose  and  flourished 
for  many  years  on  the  utmost  verge  of  civil- 
ization. 
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 
four-hundred-acre  farm  by  merely  occupying 
it,  and  the  privilege  of  exchanging  a  basket- 
ful 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  Car- 
olinians 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 
life  because  life  was  worth  comparatively 
little  in  that  hard  struggle  for  existence ;  but 
they  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.  A  habitual  drunk- 
ard 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  so- 
cially. 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  an- 
other of  falsehood,  the  ordeal  by  fisticuffs  was 
instantly  resorted  to.  Weapons  were  rarely 
employed  in  these  chivalrous  encounters,  be- 
ing kept  for  more  serious  use  with  Indians 
and  wild  beasts,  though  fists,  teeth,  and  the
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
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  their  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  this  people  was  far  above  their  circum- 
stances. 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  killed 
by  themselves,  and  in  linen  stuffs  woven  by 
from  freezing  too  stiff  to  be  put  on.  The  chil- 
dren grew  inured  to  misery  like  this,  and 
played  barefoot  in  the  snow.    It  is  an  error  to 
suppose  that  all  this  could  be  undergone  with 
impunity.  They  suffered  terribly  from  malarial 
and  rheumatic  complaints,  and  the  instances 
of  vigorous  and  painless  age  were  rare  among 
them.  The  lack  of  moral  and  mental  suste- 
nance was  still  more  marked.  They  were  in- 
clined 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  were  few  books  or  none,  and  there  was 
little  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  stimulant  to  conversation ;  a 
capital  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. 
MAP    SHOWING    VARIOUS     LOCALITIES     CONNECTED     WITH     EARLY     EVENTS    IN     THE     LINCOLN     FAMILY. 
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  su- 
perior to  those  of  the  savages  with  whom 
they  waged  constant  war.  Large  families 
lived  in  log  huts,  put  together  with  wooden 
pegs,  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 
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,  always  alert  and  hostile,  surround- 
ing their  feeble  settlements,  invisible  and 
dreadful  as  the  visionary  powers  of  the  air. 
Until  the  treaty  of  Greenville,  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  cer- 
tainty of  not   finding    it    in   ashes  when  he
LIXCOLX  AS  PIONEER. 
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. 
The  life  of  the  pioneer  Abraham  Lincoln 
soon  came  to  a  disastrous  close.  He  had 
settled  in  Jefferson  County,  on  the  land  he  had 
bought  from  the  Government,  and  cleared  a 
small  form  in  the  forest.  One  morning,  in 
the  year  17S6,  he  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;  Morde- 
cai. the  eldest  son,  ran  instinctively  to  the 
house,  Josiah  to  the  neighboring  fort  (Hughes 
Station)  for  assistance,  and  Thomas,  the 
youngest,  a  child  of  seven,  was  left  with  the 
corpse  of  his  father.  Mordecai,  reaching  the 
cabin,  seized  the  rifle,  and  saw  through  the 
loop-hole  an  Indian  in  his  war-paint  stoop- 
ing to  raise  the  child  from  the  ground.  He 
took  deliberate  aim  at  a  white  ornament  on 
the  breast  of  the  savage  and  brought  him 
down.  The  little  boy,  thus  released,  ran  to 
the  cabin,  and  Mordecai,  from  the  loft,  re- 
newed his  fire  upon  the  savages,  who  began 
to  show  themselves  from  the  thicket,  until 
Josiah  returned  with  assistance  from  the  stock- 
ade, and  the  assailants  fled.  This  tragedy  made 
an  indelible  impression  on  the  mind  of  Mor- 
decai. Either  a  spirit  of  revenge  for  his  mur- 
dered father,  or  a  sportsmanlike  pleasure  in 
his  successful  shot,  made  him  a  determined 
Indian-stalker,  and  he  rarely  stopped  to  in- 
quire whether  the  red  man  who  came  in  range 
of  his  rifle  was  friendly  or  hostile. 
The  head  of  the  family  being  gone,  the 
widow  Lincoln  soon  removed  to  a  more 
thickly  settled  neighborhood  in  Washington 
County.  There  her  children  grew  up.  Mor- 
decai and  Josiah  became  reputable  citizens; 
the  two  daughters  married  two  men  named 
Crume  and  Bromfield.  Thomas,  to  whom 
were  reserved  the  honors  of  an  illustrious  pa- 
ternity, learned  the  trade  of  a  carpenter.  He 
was  an  easy-going  man,  entirely  without  am- 
bition, but  not  without  self-respect.  Though  the 
*  All  previous  accounts  give  the  date  of  this  mar- 
riage as  September  23d.  This  error  arose  from  a  cler- 
ical blunder  in  the  county  record  of  marriages.  The 
minister,  the  Reverend  Jesse  Head,  in  making  his 
report,  wrote  the  dates  before  the  names  ;  the  clerk,  in 
copying  it,  lost  the  proper  sequence  of  the  entries, 
and  gave  to  the  Lincolns  the  date  which  belonged  to 
the  next  couple  on  the  list. 
t  The  following  is  a  copy  of  the  marriage  bond  of 
Thomas  Lincoln  : 
"  Know  all  men  by  these  presents,  that  we,  Thomas 
Lincoln  and  Richard  Berry,  are  held  and  firmly  bound 
unto  his  Excellency,  the  Governor  of  Kentucky,  in  the 
just  and  full  sum  of  fifty  pounds  current  money,  to  the 
friendliest  and  most  jovial  of  gossips,  he  was 
not  insensible  to  affronts ;  and  when  his  slow 
anger  was  roused,  he  was  a  formidable  adver- 
sary. Several  border  bullies,  at  different  times, 
crowded  him  indiscreetly,  and  were  promptly 
and  thoroughly  whipped.  He  was  strong,  well 
knit,  and  sinewy;  but  little  over  the  medium 
height,  though  in  other  respects  he  seems  to 
have  resembled  his  son  in  appearance. 
On  the  12th  of  June,  1806,*  while  learning 
his  trade  in  the  carpenter  shop  of  Joseph 
Hanks,  in  Elizabethtown,  he  married  Nancy 
Hanks,  a  niece  of  his  employer,  near  Beech- 
land,  in  Washington  County.f  She  was  one  of 
a  large  family  who  had  emigrated  from  Vir- 
ginia with  the  Lincolns  and  with  another 
family  called  Sparrow.  They  had  endured 
together  the  trials  of  pioneer  life,  and  their 
close  relations  continued  for  many  years  after, 
and  were  cemented  by  frequent  intermarriage. 
Mrs.  Lincoln's  mother  was  named  Lucy 
Hanks ;  her  sisters  were  Betty,  Polly,  and 
Nancy ;  they  married  Thomas  Sparrow,  Jesse 
Friend,  and  Levi  Hall.  The  childhood  of 
Nancy  was  passed  with  the  Sparrows,  and 
she  was  oftener  called  by  their  name  than  by 
her  own.  The  whole  family  connection  was 
composed  of  people  so  little  given  to  letters  . 
that  it  is  hard  to  determine  the  proper  names 
and  relationships  of  the  younger  members 
amid  the  tangle  of  traditional  cousinships. 
Those  who  went  to  Indiana  with  Thomas 
Lincoln,  and  grew  up  with  his  children,  are 
the  only  ones  which  need  demand  our  attention. 
There  was  no  hint  of  future  glory  in  the 
wedding  or  the  bringing  home  of  Nancy 
Lincoln.  All  accounts  represent  her  as  a 
handsome  young  woman  of  twenty-three,  of 
appearance  and  intellect  superior  to  her  lowly 
fortunes.  She  could  read  and  write, —  a  re- 
markable accomplishment  in  her  circle, —  and 
even  taught  her  husband  to  form  the  letters 
of  his  name.  He  had  no  such  valuable  wed- 
ding gift  to  bestow  upon  her ;  he  brought  her 
to  a  little  house  in  Elizabethtown,  where  he 
and  she  and  want  dwelt  together  in  fourteen 
feet  square.  The  next  year  a  daughter  was 
born  to  them,  and  the  next  the  young  car- 
penter,  not   finding   his   work    remunerative 
payment  of  which  well  and  truly  to  be  made  to  the 
said  Governor  and  his  successors,  we  bind  ourselves, 
our  heirs,  etc.,  jointly  and  severally,  firmly  by  these 
presents,  sealed  with  our  seals  and  dated  this  loth 
clay  of  June,  1806.  The  condition  of  the  above  ob- 
ligation is  such  that  whereas  there  is  a  marriage 
shortly  intended  between  the  above  bound  Thomas 
Lincoln  and  Nancy  Hanks,  for  which  a  license  has 
issued,  now  if  there  be  no  lawful  cause  to  obstruct 
the  said  marriage,  then  this  obligation  to  be  void,  else 
to  remain  in  full  force  and  virtue  in  law. 
Thomas  Lincoln  [Seal] 
Richard  Berry   [Seal] 
"Witness,  John  H.  Parrott,  Guardian."
4^ 
**7 
4? 
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d'fy 
This  certificate,  or  marriage  list,  written  by  Jesse  Head,  was  lost  sight  of  for  many  years,  and  has  only  recently  been  discovered  through 
the  efforts  of  W.  F.  Booker,  Esq.,  present  Clerk  of  Washington  County,  Kentucky.     This  fac-simile  is  the  first  ever  published.
i6 
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
enough  for  his  growing  budget,  removed  to 
a  little  farm  which  he  had  bought  on  the  easy 
terms  then  prevalent  in  Kentucky,  on  the  Big- 
South  Fork  ot  Nolin  Creek,  in  what  was  then 
Hardin  and  is  now  La  Rue  County,  three  miles 
from  Hodgensville.  The  ground  had  nothing 
attractive  about  it  but  its  cheapness.  It  was 
hardly  more  grateful  than  the  rocky  hill- 
slopes  of  New  England.  It  required  full  as 
earnest  and  intelligent  industry  to  persuade 
a  living  out  of  those  barren  hillocks  and  weedy 
hollows  covered  with  stunted  and  scrubby 
underbrush,  as  it  would  amid  the  rocks  and 
sands  of  the  northern  coast. 
Thomas  Lincoln  settled  down  in  this  dis- 
mal solitude  to  a  deeper  poverty  than  any  of 
his  name  had  ever  known  ;  and  there,  in  the 
midst  of  the  most  unpromising  circumstances 
that  ever  witnessed  the  advent  of  a  hero  into 
this  world,  Abraham  Lincoln  was  born  on  the 
1 2  th  day  of  February,  1809. 
Four  years  later,  Thomas  Lincoln  pur- 
chased a  fine  farm  of  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
eight  acres  on  Knob  Creek,  near  where  it 
flows  into  the  Rolling  Fork,  and  succeeded  in 
getting  a  portion  of  it  into  cultivation.  The 
title,  however,  remained  in  him  only  a  little 
while,  and  after  his  property  had  passed  out 
of  his  control  he  looked  about  for  another 
place  to  establish  himself. 
Of  all  these  years  of  Abraham  Lincoln's 
early  childhood  we  know  almost  nothing.* 
He  lived  a  solitary  life  in  the  woods,  return- 
ing from  his  lonesome  little  games  to  his 
cheerless  home.  He  never  talked  of  these 
days  to  his  most  intimate  friends.  Once,  when 
asked  what  he  remembered  about  the  war 
with  Great  Britain,  he  replied  :  "  Nothing  but 
this.  I  had  been  fishing  one  day  and  caught 
a  little  fish  which  I  was  taking  home.  I  met 
a  soldier  in  the  road,  and  having  been  always 
told  at  home  that  we  must  be  good  to  the 
soldiers,  I  gave  him  my  fish."  This  is  only  a 
faint  glimpse,  but  what  it  shows  is  rather 
pleasant  —  the  generous  child  and  the  patriotic 
household.  But  there  is  no  question  that  these 
first  years  of  his  life  had  their  lasting  effect 
upon  the  temperament  of  this  great  mirthful 
and  melancholy  man.  He  had  little  schooling. 
He  accompanied  his  sister  Sarah  f  to  the  only 
schools  that  existed  in  their  neighborhood, 
one  kept  by  Zachariah  Riney,  and  another  by 
*  There  is  still  living  near  Knob  Creek  in  Kentucky, 
at  the  age  of  eighty,  a  man,  of  whom  a  portrait  is  given 
on  page  19,  who  claims  to  have  known  Abraham 
Lincoln  in  his  childhood  —  Austin  Gollaher.  He  says 
he  used  to  play  with  Abe  Lincoln  in  the  shavings  of 
his  father's  carpenter  shop.  He  tells  a  story  which, 
if  accurate,  entitles  him  to  the  civic  crown  which  the 
Romans  used  to  give  to  one  who  saved  the  life  of 
a  citizen.  When  Gollaher  was  eleven  and  Lincoln 
eight  the  two  boys  were  in  the  woods  in  pursuit  of 
Caleb  Hazel,  where  he  learned  his  alphabet 
and  a  little  more.  But  of  all  those  advantages 
for  the  cultivation  of  a  young  mind  and  spirit 
which  every  home  now  offers  to  its  children, 
the  books,  toys,  ingenious  games,  and  daily 
devotion  of  parental  love,  he  knew  absolutely 
nothing. 
11. 
INDIANA. 
By  the  time  the  boy  Abraham  had  attained 
his  seventh  year,  the  social  condition  of  Ken- 
tucky had  changed  considerably  from  the 
early  pioneer  days.  Life  had  assumed  a  more 
settled  and  orderly  course.  The  old  barbarous 
equality  of  the  earlier  time  was  gone ;  a  differ- 
ence of  classes  began  to  be  seen.  Those  who 
held  slaves  assumed  a  distinct  social  superi- 
ority over  those  who  did  not.  Thomas 
Lincoln,  concluding  that  Kentucky  was  no 
country  for  a  poor  man,  determined  to  seek 
his  fortune  in  Indiana.  He  had  heard  of  rich 
and  unoccupied  lands  in  Perry  County  in 
that  State,  and  thither  he  determined  to  go. 
He  built  a  rude  raft,  loaded  it  with  his  kit  of 
tools  and  four  hundred  gallons  of  whisky, 
and  trusted  his  fortunes  to  the  winding  water- 
courses. He  met  with  only  one  accident  on 
his  way ;  his  raft  capsized  in  the  Ohio  River, 
but  he  fished  up  his  kit  of  tools  and  most  of 
the  ardent  spirits,  and  arrived  safely  at  the 
place  of  a  settler  named  Posey,  with  whom 
he  left  his  odd  invoice  of  household  goods  for 
the  wilderness,  while  he  started  on  foot  to 
look  for  a  home  in  the  dense  forest.  He  se- 
lected a  spot  which  pleased  him  in  his  first 
day's  journey.  He  then  walked  back  to  Knob 
Creek  and  brought  his  family  on  to  their  new 
home.  No  humbler  cavalcade  ever  invaded 
the  Indiana  timber.  Besides  his  wife  and  two 
children,  his  earthly  possessions  were  of  the 
slightest,  for  the  backs  of  two  borrowed 
horses  sufficed  for  the  load.  Insufficient  bed- 
ding and  clothing,  a  few  pans  and  kettles, 
were  their  sole  movable  wealth.  They  relied 
on  Lincoln's  kit  of  tools  for  their  furniture, 
and  on  his  rifle  for  their  food.  At  Posey's 
they  hired  a  wagon  and  literally  hewed  a 
path  through  the  wilderness  to  their  new 
habitation,  near  Little  Pigeon  Creek,  a  mile 
and  a  half  east  of  Gentryville,  in  a  rich  and 
fertile  forest  country. 
partridges;  in  trying  to  "  coon  "  across  Knob  Creek 
on  a  log,  Lincoln  fell  in,  and  Gollaher  fished  him 
out  with  a  sycamore  branch  —  a  service  to  the  Repub- 
lic, the  value  of  which  it  fatigues  the  imagination  to 
compute. 
t  This  daughter  of  Thomas  Lincoln  is  sometimes 
called  Nancy  and  sometimes  Sarah.  She  seems  to 
have  borne  the  former  name  during  her  mother's  life- 
time, and  to  have  taken  her  stepmother's  name  after 
Mr.  Lincoln's  second  marriage.
iS 
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
Thomas  Lincoln,  with  the  assistance  of  his 
wife  and  children,  built  a  temporary  shelter 
of  the  sort  called  in  the  frontier  language 
"  a  half-faced  camp  "  ;  merely  a  shed  of  poles, 
which  defended  the  inmates  on  three  sides 
from  the  foul  weather,  but  left  them  open  to 
its  inclemency  in  front.  For  a  whole  year 
his  family  lived  in  this  wretched  fold,  while 
he  was  clearing  a  little  patch  of  ground  for 
planting  corn  and  building  a  rough  cabin  for 
a  permanent  residence.  They  moved  into  the 
latter  before  it  was  half  completed;  for  by 
this  time  the  Sparrows  had  followed  the  Lin- 
colns  from  Kentucky,  and  the  half-faced 
camp  was  given  up  to  them.    But  the  rude 
material  for  breeches  or  shoes.  His  cabin 
was  like  that  of  other  pioneers.  A  few  three- 
legged  stools;  a  bedstead  made  of  poles  stuck 
between  the  logs  in  the  angle  of  the  cabin, 
the  outside  corner  supported  by  a  crotched 
stick  driven  into  the  ground;  the  table,  a 
huge  hewed  log  standing  on  four  legs;  a  pot, 
kettle,  and  skillet,  and  a  few  tin  and  pewter 
dishes,  were  all  the  furniture.  The  boy  Abra- 
ham climbed  at  night  to  his  bed  of  leaves  in 
the  loft,  by  a  ladder  of  wooden  pins  driven 
into  the  logs. 
This  life  has  been  vaunted  by  poets  and 
romancers  as  a  happy  and  healthful  one.  Even 
Dennis  Hanks,  speaking  of  his  youthful  days 
HOUSE     NEAR     BEECHLAND,    KENTUCKY,    IN     WHICH     THOMAS     LINCOLN     AND     NANCY     HANKS     WERE     MARRIED      JUNE     12TH,    1806. 
(NOW     OCCUPIED     BY    H.     F.     REED.) 
cabin  seemed  so  spacious  and  comfortable 
after  the  squalor  of  "  the  camp,"  that  Thomas 
Lincoln  did  no  further  work  on  it  for  a  long 
time.  He  left  it  for  a  year  or  two  without 
doors,  or  windows,  or  floor.  The  battle  for 
existence  allowed  him  no  time  for  superfluities 
like  these.  He  raised  enough  corn  to  support 
life;  the  dense  forest  around  him  abounded  in 
every  form  of  feathered  game ;  a  little  way 
from  his  cabin  an  open  glade  was  full  of  deer- 
licks,  and  an  hour  or  two  of  idle  waiting  was 
generally  rewarded  by  a  shot  at  a  fine  deer, 
which  would  furnish  meat  for  a  week,  and 
when  his  only  home  was  the  half-faced  camp, 
says,  "  I  tell  you,  Billy,  I  enjoyed  myself  bet- 
ter then  than  I  ever  have  since."  But  we  may 
distrust  the  reminiscences  of  old  settlers,  who 
see  their  youth  through  a  rosy  mist  of  mem- 
ory. The  life  was  neither  enjoyable  nor 
wholesome.  The  rank  woods  were  full  of  ma- 
laria, and  singular  epidemics  from  time  to  time 
ravaged  the  settlements.  In  the  autumn  of 
18 1 8  the  little  community  of  Pigeon  Creek 
was  almost  exterminated  by  a  frightful  pesti- 
lence called  the  milk-sickness,  or  in  the  dialect 
of  the  country  "  the  milk-sick."    It  is  a  mys-
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
terious  disease  which  has  been  the  theme  of 
endless  wrangling  among  Western  physicians, 
and  the  difficulty  of  ascertaining  anything 
about  it  has  been  greatly  increased  by  the 
local  sensitiveness  which  forbids  any  one  to 
admit  that  any  well-defined  case  has  ever  been 
seen  in  his  neighborhood,  "  although  just  over 
the  creek,  or  in  the  next  county,  they  have  had 
it  bad."  It  seems  to  have  been  a  malignant 
form  of  fever —  attributed  variously  to  malaria 
and  to  the  eating  of  poisonous  herbs  by  the 
cattle  —  attacking  cattle  as  well  as  human 
beings,  attended  with  violent  retching  and  a 
burning  sensation  in  the  stomach,  often  ter- 
minating fatally  on  the  third  day.  In  many 
cases  those  who  apparently  recovered  lingered 
for  years  with  health  seriously  impaired. 
Among  the  pioneers  of  Pigeon  Creek,  so  ill- 
fed,  ill-housed,  and  uncared  for,  there  was 
little  prospect  of  recovery  from  such  a  grave 
disorder.  The  Sparrows,  husband  and  wife, 
died  early  in  October,  and  Nancy  Hanks  Lin- 
coln followed  them  after  an  interval  of  a  few 
days.  Thomas  Lincoln  made  the  coffins  for 
his  dead  "out  of  green  lumber  cut  with  a 
whip-saw,"  and  they  were  all  buried,  with 
scant  ceremony,  in  a  little  clearing  of  the  for- 
est. It  is  related  of  little  Abraham,  that  he 
sorrowed  most  of  all  that  his  mother  should 
have  been  laid  away  with  such  maimed  rites, 
and  that  he  contrived  several  months  later 
to  have  a  wandering  preacher  named  David 
Elkin  brought  to  the  settlement,  to  deliver  a 
AUSTIN     GOLLAHER.        (FROM     A     PHOTOGRAPH     BY     WYBRANT  ) 
J^C^^^^f.^ 
PORTRAIT     OF     JESSE     HEAD,    DEACON     METHODIST     EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH,   WHO    MARRIED   THOMAS    LINCOLN    AND   NANCY   HANKS. 
(AFTER     A     SILHOUETTE     BY     RUDOLPH     BOCCOSSINI,    IN 
POSSESSION     OF     R.    T.    DI'RRETT,    ESQ.) 
funeral  sermon  over  her  grave,  already  stiff 
and  white  with  the  early  winter  snows.* 
This  was  the  dreariest  winter  of  his  life,  for 
before  the  next  December  came  his  father 
had  brought  from  Kentucky  a  new  wife,  who 
was  to  change  the  lot  of  all  the  desolate  little 
family  very  much  for  the  better.  Sarah  Bush 
had  been  an  acquaintance  of  Thomas  Lincoln 
before  his  first  marriage;  she  had,  it  is  said, 
rejected  him  to  marry  one  Johnston,  the  jailer 
at  Elizabethtown,  who  had  died,  leaving  her 
with  three  children,  a  boy  and  two  girls. 
When  Lincoln's  widowhood  had  lasted  a 
year,  he  went  down  to  Elizabethtown  to  begin 
again  the  wooing  broken  off  so  many  years 
before.  He  wasted  no  time  in  preliminaries, 
but  promptly  made  his  wishes  known,  and 
the  next  morning  they  were  married.  It  was 
growing  late  in  the  autumn,  and  the  pioneer 
probably  dreaded  another  lonely  winter  on 
Pigeon  Creek.  Mrs.  Johnston  was  not  alto- 
gether portionless.  She  had  a  store  of  house- 
hold goods  which  filled  a  four-horse  wagon, 
borrowed  of  Ralph  Krume,  Thomas  Lincoln's 
brother-in-law,  to  transport  the  bride  to  In- 
*  A  stone  has  been  placed  over  the  site  of  the  grave 
by  Mr.  P.  E.  Studebaker  of  South  Bend,  Indiana. 
The  stone  bears  the  following  inscription  :  "  Nancy 
Hanks  Lincoln,  mother  of  President  Lincoln,  died 
October  5th,  A.  D.  1S1S,  aged  35  years.  Erected  by  a 
friend  of  her  martyred  son,  1S79. "
LIXCOLX  AS  PIONEER. 
diana.    Et  took  little  time  for 
and    honest    Christian   woman 
influence    felt,    even   in    these 
surroundings,    and      Thomas 
the  children  were  the  better 
ing  all  the  rest  oi  their  lives. 
doors  and  floors  was  at  once 
corrected.  Her  honest  pride 
inspired  her  husband  to  greater 
thrift  and  industry.  The  goods 
she  brought  with  her  compelled 
some  effort  at  harmony  in  the 
other  fittings  of  the  house.  She 
dressed  the  children  in  warmer 
clothing  and  put  them  to  sleep 
in  comfortable  beds.  With  this 
little  addition  to  their  resources 
the  family  were  much  improved 
in  appearance,  behavior,  and 
self-respect. 
Thomas  Lincoln  joined  the 
Baptist  church,  at  Little  Pigeon 
tins  energetic 
to   make  her 
discouraging 
Lincoln  and 
for  her  com- 
The  lack  of 
Lincoln,  in  one  of  those  rare  bits  of  autobi- 
ography which  he  left  behind  him,  "  with  many 
bears  and  other  wild  animals  still  in  the  woods. 
There  were  some  schools  so  called,  but  no  qual- 
ification was  ever  required  of  a  teacher  beyond 
'  readin',  writin',  and  cypherin'  to  the  Rule  of 
i®mm& 
I 
M 
WM i W 
mm 
&0W 
It 
in  1823;  his 
oldest  child, 
Sarah,  fol- 
lowed his 
example 
three  years 
later.  They  were  known  as  active  and  con- 
sistent members  of  that  communion.  Lincoln 
was  himself  a  good  carpenter  when  he  chose 
to  work  at  his  trade;  a  walnut  table  made  by 
him  is  still  preserved  as  part  of  the  furniture 
of  the  church  to  which  he  belonged.* 
Such  a  woman  as  Sarah  Bush  could  not  be 
careless  of  so  important  a  matter  as  the  educa- 
tion of  her  children,  and  they  made  the  best  use 
of  the  scanty  opportunities  the  neighborhood 
afforded.    "  It  was  a  wild  region,"  writes  Mr. 
*  MS.  letter  from  Rev.  T.  V.  Robertson,  pastor  of 
the  Little  Pigeon  Baptist  church. 
-.    "-    "••     -     -  ./  '   '     -,,';• 
VIEW   OF   THOMAS   LINCOLN'S    FARM,    WHERE   PRESIDENT   LINCOLN 
WAS   BORN.       (FARM    NOW   OCCUPIED    BY   MRS.    RICHARD   CREAL.) 
THE    HOUSE    STOOD    BACK    OF    GROUP    OF    TREES    NEAR    RIGHT 
CENTER    OF    PICTURE  ;     ROCK    SPRING    AT    END    OF    PATH 
UNDER     GROUP     OF     TREES     IN     LEFT     CENTER. 
Three.'  If  a  straggler  supposed  to  understand 
Latin  happened  to  sojourn  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, he  was  looked  upon  as  a  wizard.  There 
was  absolutely  nothing  to  excite  ambition  for 
education."  But  in  the  case  of  this  ungainly 
boy  there  was  no  necessity  of  any  external  in- 
centive. A  thirst  for  knowledge  as  a  means  of 
rising  in  the  world  was  innate  in  him.    It  had 
HOUSE    WHERE    PRESIDENT     LINCOLN     WAS     BORN.       (FROM     A 
SKETCH    FROM    MEMORY,  IN    POSSESSION    OF   R.  T.  DURRETT,  ESQ.)
LINCOLN  AS   PIONEER. 
nothing  to  do  with  that  love  of  science  for  its 
own  sake  which  has  been  so  often  seen  in 
lowly  savants,  who  have  sacrificed  their  lives 
to  the  pure  desire  of  knowing  the  works  of 
God.  All  the  little  learning  he  ever  acquired 
he  seized  as  a  tool  to  better  his  condition. 
He  learned  his  letters  that  he  might  read 
books  and  see  how  men  in  the  great  world 
outside  of  his  woods  had  borne  themselves  in 
logs,  as  distinguished  from  the  more  i  l 
cratic  "  split  logs,"  with  earthen  floor.. 
small  holes  for  windows,  sometimes  illumi- 
nated by  as  much  light  as  could  penetrate 
through  panes  of  paper  greased  with  lard. 
The  teachers  were  usually  in  keeping  with 
their  primitive  surroundings.  The  profession 
offered  no  rewards  sufficient  to  attract  men  of 
education  or  capacity.  After  a  few  months  of 
VIEW     OF     ROCK     SPRING     ON     THE     THOMAS     LINCOLN     FARM     NEAR     THE     HOUSE     WHERE     THE     PRESIDENT     WAS     BORN. 
the  fight  for  which  he  longed.  He  learned  to 
write,  first,  that  he  might  have  an  accomplish- 
ment his  playmates  had  not;  then  that  he 
might  help  his  elders  by  writing  their  letters, 
and  enjoy  the  feeling  of  usefulness  which  this 
gave  him;  and  finally  that  he  might  copy 
what  struck  him  in  his  reading  and  thus  make 
it  his  own  for  future  use.  He  learned  to  cipher 
certainly  from  no  love  of  mathematics,  but 
because  it  might  come  in  play  in  some  more 
congenial  business  than  the  farm-work  which 
bounded  the  horizon  of  his  contemporaries. 
Had  it  not  been  for  that  interior  spur  which 
kept  his  clear  spirit  at  its  task,  his  schools 
could  have  done  little  for  him ;  for,  counting 
his  attendance  under  Riney  and  Hazel  in 
Kentucky,  and  under  Dorsey,  Crawford,  and 
Swaney  in  Indiana,  it  amounted  to  less  than 
a  year  in  all.  The  schools  were  much  alike. 
They  were  held  in  deserted  cabins  of  round 
desultory  instruction  young  Abraham  knew  all 
that  these  vagrant  literati  could  teach  him.  His 
last  school-days  were  passed  with  one  Swaney 
in  1826,  who  taught  at  a  distance  of  four  and  a 
half  miles  from  the  Lincoln  cabin.  The  nine 
miles  of  walking  doubtless  seemed  to  Thomas 
Lincoln  a  waste  of  time,  and  the  lad  was  put 
at  steady  work  and  saw  no  more  of  school. 
But  it  is  questionable  whether  he  lost  any- 
thing by  being  deprived  of  the  ministrations 
of  the  backwoods  dominies.  When  his  tasks 
ended,  his  studies  became  the  chief  pleasure 
of  his  life.  In  all  the  intervals  of  his  work  — 
in  which  he  never  took  delight,  knowing  well 
enough  that  he  was  born  for  something  better 
than  that — he  read,  wrote,  and  ciphered  in- 
cessantly. His  reading  was  naturally  limited 
by  his  opportunities,  for  books  were  among 
the  rarest  of  luxuries  in  that  region  and  time. 
But  he  read  everything  he  could  lav  his  hands
UNCOLX  AS  PIONEER. 
upon,  and  he  was  certainly  fortunate  in  the 
few  books  of  which  he  became  the  possessor. 
It  would  hardly  be  possible  to  select  a  better 
handful  oi  classics  for  a  youth  in  his  circum- 
stances than  the  few  volumes  he  turned  with 
a  nightly  and  daily  hand  —  the  Bible,  yEsop's 
Fables, Robinson  Crusoe,  The  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress, a  History  of  the  United  States,  and 
Weems's  Life  of  Washington.  These  were  the 
best,  and  these  he  read  over  and  over  till  he 
knew  them  almost  by  heart.  But  his  voracity 
for  anything  printed  was  insatiable.  He 
would  sit  in  the  twilightand  read  a  dictionary 
to  think  of  this  great-spirited  child,  battling 
year  after  year  against  his  evil  star,  wasting 
his  ingenuity  upon  devices  and  makeshifts,  his 
high  intelligence  starving  for  want  of  the 
simple  appliances  of  education  which  are  now 
offered  gratis  to  the  poorest  and  most  indiffer- 
ent. He  did  a  man's  work  from  the  time  he 
left  school;  his  strength  and  stature  were 
already  far  beyond  those  of  ordinary  men.  He 
wrought  his  appointed  tasks  ungrudgingly, 
though  without  enthusiasm ;  but  when  his 
employer's  day  was  over,  his  own  began. 
John  Hanks  says :  "  When  Abe  and  I  re- 
hodgen's   mill  and  dam  on   main   nolin   creek,  three   miles   from   Lincoln's   birthplace;  town   of   hodgensville 
in   the   background. 
as  long  as  he  could  see.  He  used  to  go  to 
David  Turnham's,  the  town  constable,  and 
devour  the  Revised  Statutes  of  Indiana,  as 
in  our  day  do  the  Three  Guardsmen. 
Of  the  books  he  did  not  own  he  took  volu- 
minous notes,  filling  his  copy-book  with  choice 
extracts,  and  poring  over  them  until  they 
were  fixed  in  his  memory.  He  could  not  af- 
ford to  waste  paper  upon  his  own  original 
compositions.  He  would  sit  by  the  fire  at 
night  and  cover  the  wooden  shovel  with  essays 
and  arithmetical  exercises,  which  he  would 
shave    off  and  begin  again.      It  is  touching 
turned  to  the  house  from  work  he  would  go 
to  the  cupboard,  snatch  a  piece  of  corn-bread, 
take  down  a  book,  sit  down,  cock  his  legs  up 
as  high  as  his  head,  and  read."*  The  picture 
may  be  lacking  in  grace,  but  its  truthfulness  is 
beyond  question.  The  habit  remained  with 
him  always.  Some  of  his  greatest  work  in  later 
years  was  done  in  this  grotesque  Western  fash- 
ion,—  "sitting  on  his  shoulder-blades." 
Otherwise  his  life  at  this  time  differed  little 
from  that  of  ordinary  farm-hands.    His  great 
strength  and  intelligence  made  him  a  valu- 
*  Lamon,  p.  37.
V 
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
& 
CABIN  WHICH  FORMERLY  STOOD  ON  RACE  STREET,  NORTH  OF  THE  BRIDGE  OVER  VALLEY  CREEK, 
ELIZABETHTOWN.  (DRAWN  BY  GEORGE  L.  FRANKENSTEIN  FROM  NATURE,  IN  1865,  WHEN 
TRADITION    SAID   IT  WAS  THE   DWELLING   OF   THOMAS    LINCOLN    AFTER    HIS    FIRST   MARRIAGE.) 
able  laborer,  and  his  unfailing  good  temper 
and  flow  of  rude  rustic  wit  rendered  him  the 
most  agreeable  of  comrades.  He  was  always 
ready  with  some  kindly  act  or  word  for  others. 
Once  he  saved  the  life  of  the  town  drunkard, 
whom  he  found  freezing  by  the  roadside,  by 
carrying  him  in  his  strong  arms  to 
the  tavern,  and  working  over  him 
until  he  revived.    It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  this  act  of 
common  humanity  was 
regarded  as  something 
remarkable  in  the 
neighborhood  ;  the 
grateful  sot  himself  al- 
ways said  "  it  was 
mighty  clever  of  Abe 
EWBraf  to  tote  rne  so  far  tnat 
WBSUShStKfl       co^    night."     It    was 
-  *  '  jgjt  
j      also  considered  an  ec- 
|      centricity  that  he  hated 
and    preached  against 
cruelty      to      animals. 
Some  of  his  comrades 
remember      still      his 
bursts      of     righteous 
wrath,    when    a    boy, 
against     the     wanton 
murder  of  turtles  and 
other    creatures.     He 
was  evidently   of  bet- 
ter and  finer  clay  than 
his    fellows,    even    in 
those   wild    and  igno- 
rant days.    At  home  he  was  the  life  of  the 
singularly  assorted  household,  which  consisted , 
besides  his  parents  and  himself,  of  his  sister, 
Mrs.  Lincoln's  two 
girls      and      boy, 
Dennis  Hanks,  the 
Grave  of  Lincoln's   Mother. 
THOMAS     LINCOLN     FARM,    SPENCER    COUNTY,    INDIANA,    NEAR    THE    TOWN    OF     LINCOLN     AND    GENTRYVILLE. 
THE     FIGURE    OF    A    MAN     STANDS    ON    THE     SITE    OF    THE    CABIN.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
.  JIIMIp 
IllllllllliplllIIIl! 
John  "ii.  After  a  photograph  in  possession  of  William  H.  Heritdon,  Iisq. 
SARAH     BUSH     LINCOLN     AT     THE     AGE    OF    SEVENTY-SIX,    STEPMOTHER    OF    ABRAHAM     LINCOLN. 
legacy  of  the  dying  Sparrow  family,  and  John 
Hanks  (son  of  the  carpenter  Joseph  with  whom 
Thomas  Lincoln  learned  his  trade),  who  came 
from  Kentucky  several  years  after  the  others. 
It  was  probably  as  much  the  inexhaustible  good 
nature  and  kindly  helpfulness  of  young  Abra- 
ham which  kept  the  peace  among  all  these  het- 
erogeneous elements,  effervescing  with  youth 
and  confined  in  a  one-roomed  cabin,  as  it  was 
the  Christian  sweetness  and  firmness  of  the 
woman  of  the  house.  It  was  a  happy  and  uni- 
ted household  :  brothers  and  sisters  and  cousins 
living  peacefully  under  the  gentle  rule  of  the 
good  stepmother,  but  all  acknowledging  from 
a  very  early  period  the  supremacy  in  goodness 
and  cleverness  of  their  big  brother  Abraham. 
Mrs.  Lincoln,  not  long  before  her  death,  gave 
striking  testimony  of  his  winning  and  loyal 
character.  She  said  to  Mr.  Herndon  :*  "I  can 
*  Lamon,  p.  39.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
say,  what  scarcely  one  mother  in  a  thousand 
can  say,  Abe  never  gave  me  a  cross  word  or 
look,  and  never  refused  in  fact  or  appearance  to 
do  anything  I  asked  him.  His  mind  and  mine  — 
what  little  I  had  —  seemed  to  run  together. 
.  .  .  I  had  a  son  John,  who  was  raised 
with  Abe.  Both  were  good  boys,  but  I  must 
say,  both  now  being  dead,  that  Abe  was  the 
best  boy  I  ever  saw  or  expect  to  see."  Such 
were  the  beginnings  of  this  remarkable  career, 
sacred,  as  we  see,  from  childhood  to  duty 
and  to  human  kindliness. 
We  are  making  no  claim  of  early  saintship 
for  him.  He  was  merely  a  good  boy,  with 
sufficient  wickedness  to  prove  his  humanity. 
One  of  his  employers,  undazzled  by  recent 
history,  faithfully  remembers  that  young  Abe 
liked  his  dinner  and  his  pay  better  than  his 
work  :  there  is  surely  nothing  alien  to  ordi- 
nary mortality  in  this.  It  is  also  reported  that 
he  sometimes  impeded  the  celerity  of  harvest 
operations  by  making  burlesque  speeches,  or 
worse  than  that,  comic  sermons,  from  the  top 
of  some  tempting  stump,  to  the  delight  of 
the  hired  hands  and  the  exasperation  of  the 
farmer.  His  budding  talents  as  a  writer  were 
not  always  used  discreetly.  He  was  too  much 
given  to  scribbling  coarse  satires  and  chroni- 
cles, in  prose,  and  in  something  which  had 
to  him  and  his  friends  the  air  of  verse.  From 
this  arose  occasional  heart-burnings  and  feuds, 
in  which  Abraham  bore  his  part  according  to 
the  custom  of  the  country.  Despite  his  Quaker 
ancestry  and  his  natural  love  of  peace,  he  was 
no  non-resistant,  and  when  he  once  entered 
upon  a  quarrel  the  opponent  usually  had  the 
worst  of  it.  But  he  was  generous  and  placable, 
and  some  of  his  best  friends  were  those  with 
whom  he  had  had  differences,  and  had  settled 
them  in  the  way  then  prevalent, —  in  a  ring  of 
serious  spectators,  calmly  and  critically  chew- 
ing their  cuds  under  the  shade  of  some  spread- 
ing oak,  at  the  edge  of  the  timber. 
Before  we  close  our  sketch  of  this  period 
of  Lincoln's  life,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  glance 
for  a  moment  at  the  state  of  society  among 
the  people  with  whom  his  lot  was  cast  in  these 
important  years. 
In  most  respects  there  had  been  little  moral 
or  material  improvement  since  the  early  set- 
tlement of  the  country.  Their  houses  were 
usually  of  one  room,  built  of  round  logs  with 
the  bark  on.  We  have  known  a  man  to  gain 
the  sobriquet  of  "  Split-log  Mitchell "  by  in- 
dulging in  the  luxury  of  building  a  cabin  of 
square-hewn  timbers.  Their  dress  was  still 
mostly  of  tanned  deer-hide,  a  material  to  the 
last  degree  uncomfortable  when  the  wearer 
was  caught  in  a  shower.  Their  shoes  were 
of  the  same,  and  a  good  Western  authority 
calls  a  wet  moccasin  "  a  decent  way  of  going 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 4. 
barefoot."  About  the  time,  however,  when 
Lincoln  grew  to  manhood,  garments  of  wool 
and  of  tow  began  to  be  worn,  dyed  with  the 
juice  of  the  butternut  or  white  walnut,  and 
the  hides  of  neat-cattle  began  to  be  tanned. 
But  for  a  good  while  it  was  only  the  women 
who  indulged  in  these  novelties.  There  was 
little  public  worship.  Occasionally  an  itiner- 
ant preacher  visited  a  county,  and  the  settlers 
for  miles  around  would  go  nearly  in  mass  to 
the  meeting.  If  a  man  was  possessed  of  a 
wagon,  the  family  rode  luxuriously ;  but  as  a 
rule  the  men  walked  and  the  women  went  on 
horseback  with  the  little  children  in  their  arms. 
It  was  considered  no  violation  of  the  sanctities 
of  the  occasion  to  carry  a  rifle  and  take  ad- 
vantage of  any  game  which  might  be  stirring 
during  the  long  walk.  Arriving  at  the  place 
of  meeting,  which  was  some  log  cabin  if  the 
weather  was  foul,  or  the  shade  of  a  tree  if  it 
was  fair,  the  assembled  worshipers  threw  their 
provisions  into  a  common  store  and  picnicked 
in  neighborly  companionship.  The  preacher 
would  then  take  off  his  coat,  and  go  at  his 
work  with  an  energy  unknown  to  our  days. 
There  were  few  other  social  meetings.  Men 
came  together  for  "  raisings,"  where  a  house 
was  built  in  a  day  ;  for  "log-rollings,"  where 
tons  of  excellent  timber  were  piled  together 
and  wastefully  burned ;  for  wolf-hunts,  where 
a  tall  pole  was  erected  in  the  midst  of  a  prairie 
or  clearing,  and  a  great  circle  of  hunters 
formed  around  it,  sometimes  of  miles  in  di- 
ameter, which,  gradually  contracting  with 
shouts  and  yells,  drove  all  the  game  in  the 
woods  together  at  the  pole  for  slaughter ;  and 
for  horse-races,  which  bore  little  resemblance 
to  those  magnificent  exhibitions  which  are  the 
boast  of  Kentucky  at  this  time.  In  these  af- 
fairs the  women  naturally  took  no  part ;  but 
weddings,  which  were  entertainments  scarcely 
less  rude  and  boisterous,  were  their  own  pecu- 
liar province.  These  festivities  lasted  rarely 
less  than  twenty-four  hours.  The  guests  as- 
sembled in  the  morning.  There  was  a  race 
for  the  whisky  bottle;  a  midday  dinner;  an 
afternoon  of  rough  games  and  outrageous 
practical  jokes  ;  a  supper  and  dance  at  night, 
interrupted  by  the  successive  withdrawals  of 
the  bride  and  groom,  attended  with  ceremonies 
and  jests  of  more  than  Rabelaisian  crudeness ; 
and  a  noisy  dispersal  next  day. 
The  one  point  at  which  they  instinctively 
clung  to  civilization  was  their  regard  for  law 
and  reverence  for  courts  of  justice.  Yet  these 
were  of  the  simplest  character  and  totally 
devoid  of  any  adventitious  accessories.  An 
early  jurist  of  the  country  writes  : *  "I  was 
Circuit  Prosecuting  Attorney  at  the  time  of 
the  trials  at   the  falls  of  Fall   Creek,  where 
*  O.  H.  Smith,  "  Early  Indiana  Trials,"  p.  2S5.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER 
Pendleton  now  stands.  Four  of  the  prisoners 
were  convicted  of  murder,  and  three  of  them 
hung  for  killing  Indians.  The  court  was  held 
in  a  double  Log  cabin,  the  grand  jury  sat 
upon  a  log  in  the  woods,  and  the  foreman 
signed  the  bills  of  indictment,  which  I  had 
prepared,  upon  his  knee ;  there  was  not  a  petit 
juror  that  had  shoes  on;  all  wore  moccasins, 
and  were  belted  around  the  waist,  and  carried 
side-knives  used  by  the  hunters."  Yet  amidst 
all  this  apparent  savagery  we  see  justice  was 
done,  and  the  law  vindicated  even  against  the 
bitterest  prejudices  of  these  pioneer  jurymen. 
They  were  full  of  strange  superstitions. 
The  belief  in  witchcraft  had  long  ago  passed 
away  with  the  smoke  of  the  fagots  from  old 
and  Xew  England,  but  it  survived  far  into 
this  century  in  Kentucky  and  the  lower 
halves  of  Indiana  and  Illinois, — touched  with 
a  peculiar  tinge  of  African  magic.  The  pio- 
neers believed  in  it  for  good  and  evil.  Their 
veterinary  practice  was  mostly  by  charms  and 
incantations;  and  when  a  person  believed 
himself  bewitched,  a  shot  at  the  image  of  the 
witch  with  a  bullet  melted  out  of  a  half-dollar 
was  the  favorite  curative  agency.  Luck  was  an 
active  divinity  in  their  apprehension,  powerful 
for  blessing  or  bane,  announced  by  homely 
signs,  to  be  placated  by  quaint  ceremonies. 
A  dog  crossing  the  hunter's  path  spoiled  his 
day,  unless  he  instantly  hooked  his  little 
fingers  together,  and  pulled  till  the  animal 
disappeared.*  They  wrere  familiar  with  the 
ever-recurring  mystification  of  the  witch-hazel, 
or  divining-rod  ;  and  the  "  cure  by  faith  "  was 
as  well  known  to  them  as  it  has  since  become 
in  a  more  sophisticated  state  of  society.  The 
commonest  occurrences  were  heralds  of  death 
and  doom.  A  bird  lighting  in  a  window,  a  dog 
baying  at  certain  hours,  the  cough  of  a  horse 
in  the  direction  of  a  child,  the  sight,  or  worse 
still,  the  touch  of  a  dead  snake,  heralded  do- 
mestic woe.  A  wagon  driving  past  the  house 
witli  a  load  of  baskets  was  a  warning  of  at- 
mospheric disturbance.  A  vague  and  igno- 
rant astronomy  governed  their  plantings  and 
sowings,  the  breeding  of  their  cattle,  and  all 
farm-work.  They  must  fell  trees  for  fence- 
rails  before  noon,  and  in  the  waxing  of  the 
moon.  Fences  built  when  there  was  no  moon  f 
would  give  way;  but  that  was  the  proper 
season  for  planting  potatoes  and  other  vege- 
tables whose  fruit  grows  underground;  those 
which  bear  their  product -in  the  air  must  be 
planted  when  the  moon  shone.  The  magical 
power  of  the  moon  was  wide  in  its  influence; 
it  extended  to  the  most  minute  details  of  life. 
Among  these  people,  and  in  all  essential 
respects  one  of  them,  Abraham  Lincoln  passed 
his  childhood  and  youth.  He  was  not  re- 
*  Lamon,  p.  44.  t  lb. 
markably  precocious.  His  mind  was  slow  in 
acquisition,  and  his  powers  of  reasoning  and 
rhetoric  improved  constantly  to  the  end  of  his 
life,  at  a  rate  of  progress  marvelously  regular 
and  sustained.  But  there  was  that  about  him, 
even  at  the  age  of  nineteen  years,  which  might 
well  justify  his  admiring  friends  in  presaging 
for  him  an  unusual  career.  He  had  read  every 
book  he  could  find,  and  could  "spell  down" 
the  whole  county  at  their  orthographical  con- 
tests. By  dint  of  constant  practice  he  had  ac- 
quired an  admirably  clear  and  serviceable 
handwriting.  He  occasionally  astounded  his 
companions  by  such  glimpses  of  occult  science 
as  that  the  world  is  round  and  that  the  sun  is 
relatively  stationary.  He  wrote,  for  his  own 
amusement  and  edification,  essays  on  politics, 
of  which  gentlemen  of  standing  who  had  been 
favored  with  a  perusal  said  with  authority,  at 
the  cross-roads  grocery,  "  The  world  can't 
beat  it."  One  or  two  of  these  compositions 
got  into  print  and  vastly  increased  the  author's 
local  fame.  He  was  also  a  magnanimous 
boy,  with  a  larger  and  kindlier  spirit  than 
common.  His  generosity,  courage,  and  capa- 
bility of  discerning  two  sides  to  a  dispute, 
were  remarkable  even  then,  and  won  him 
the  admiration  of  those  to  whom  such  qual- 
ities were  unknown.  But  perhaps  after  all  the 
thing  which  gained  and  fixed  his  mastery 
over  his  fellows  was  to  a  great  degree  his 
gigantic  stature  and  strength.  He  attained 
his  full  growth,  six  feet  and  four  inches,  two 
years  before  he  came  of  age.  He  rarely  met 
with  a  man  he  could  not  easily  handle.  His 
strength  is  still  a  tradition  in  Spencer  County  4 
One  aged  man  says  that  he  has  seen  him 
"  pick  up  and  carry  away  a  chicken-house 
weighing  six  hundred  pounds."  At  another 
time,  seeing  some  men  preparing  a  contriv- 
ance for  lifting  some  large  posts,  Abe  quickly 
shouldered  the  posts  and  took  them  where 
they  were  needed.  One  of  his  employers  says, 
"  He  could  sink  an  axe  deeper  into  wood 
than  any  man  I  ever  saw."  With  strength 
like  this  and  a  brain  to  direct  it,  a  man  was 
a  born  leader  in  that  country  and  at  that  time. 
There  are,  of  course,  foolish  stories  extant 
that  Abraham  used  to  boast,  and  that  others 
used  to  predict,  that  he  should  be  President 
some  day.  The  same  thing  is  daily  said  of 
thousands  of  boys  who  will  never  be  con- 
stables. But  there  is  evidence  that  he  felt  too 
large  for  the  life  of  a  farm-hand  on  Pigeon 
Creek,  and  his  thoughts  naturally  turned,  after 
the  manner  of  restless  boys  in  the  West,  to 
the  river,  as  the  avenue  of  escape  from  the 
narrow  life  of  the  woods.  He  once  asked  an 
old  friend  to  give  him  a  recommendation  to 
some  steamboat  on  the  Ohio,  but  desisted 
t  Lamon,  p.  52.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
from  his  purpose  on  being  reminded  that  his 
father  had  the  right  to  dispose  of  his  time 
for  a  year  or  so  more.  But  in  1828  an  oppor- 
tunity offered  for  a  little  glimpse  of  the  world 
outside,  and  the  boy  gladly  embraced  it.  He 
was  hired  by  Mr.  Gentry,  the  proprietor  of 
the  neighboring  village  of  Gentry ville,  to 
accompany  his  son  with  a  flat-boat  of  prod- 
uce to  New  Orleans  and  intermediate  land- 
ings. The  voyage  was  made  successfully, 
and  Abraham  gained  great  credit  for  his 
management  and  sale  of  the  cargo.  The 
only  important  incident  of  the  trip  occurred 
at  the  plantation  of  Madame  Duchesne, 
a  few  miles  below  Baton  Rouge.  The  young 
merchants  had  tied  up  for  the  night  and  were 
asleep  in  the  cabin,  when  they  were  aroused 
by  shuffling  footsteps,  which  proved  to  be  a 
gang  of  marauding  negroes,  coming  to  rob 
the  boat.  Abraham  instantly  attacked  them 
with  a  club,  knocked  several  overboard  and 
put  the  rest  to  flight ;  flushed  with  battle,  he 
and  Allen  Gentry  carried  the  war  into  the 
enemy's  country,  and  pursued  the  retreating 
Africans  some  distance  in  the  darkness.  They 
then  returned  to  the  boat,  bleeding  but  vic- 
torious, and  hastily  swung  into  the  stream  and 
floated  down  the  river  till  daylight.  Lincoln's 
exertions  in  later  years  for  the  welfare  of  the 
African  race  showed  that  this  night  battle 
had  not  led  him  to  any  hasty  and  hostile 
generalizations. 
The  next  autumn,  John  Hanks,  the  stead- 
iest and  most  trustworthy  of  the  family,  went 
to  Illinois.  Though  an  illiterate  and  rather 
dull  man,  he  had  a  good  deal  of  solidity  of 
character  and  consequently  some  influence  and 
consideration  in  the  household.  He  settled  in 
Macon  County,  and  was  so  well  pleased  with 
the  country,  and  especially  with  its  admirable 
distribution  into  prairie  and  timber,  that  he 
sent  repeated  messages  to  his  friends  in  In- 
diana to  come  out  and  join  him.  Thomas 
Lincoln  was  always  ready  to  move.  He  had 
probably  by  this  time  despaired  of  ever  own- 
ing any  unencumbered  real  estate  in  Indiana, 
and  the  younger  members  of  the  family  had 
little  to  bind  them  to  the  place  where  they 
saw  nothing  in  the  future  but  hard  work  and 
poor  living.  Thomas  Lincoln  handed  over 
his  farm  to  Mr.  Gentry,  sold  his  crop  of  corn 
and  hogs,  packed  his  household  goods  and 
those  of  his  children  and  sons-in-law  into  a 
single  wagon,  drawn  by  two  yoke  of  oxen, 
the  combined  wealth  of  himself  and  Dennis 
Hanks,  and  started  for  the  new  State.  His 
daughter  Sarah  or  Nancy,  for  she  was  called 
by  both  names,  who  married  Aaron  Grigsby 
a  few  years  before,  had  died  in  childbirth. 
The  emigrating  family  consisted  of  the  Lin- 
colns,  John  Johnston,  Mrs.  Lincoln's  son,  and 
her  daughters,  Mrs.    Hall  and   Mrs.    Hanks, 
with  their  husbands. 
Two  weeks  of  weary  tramping  through  for- 
est roads  and  muddy  prairie,  and  the  danger- 
ous fording  of  streams  swollen  by  the  Febru- 
ary thaws,  brought  the  party  to  John  Hanks's 
place  near  Decatur.  He  met  them  with  a 
frank  and  energetic  welcome.  He  had  already 
selected  a  piece  of  ground  for  them  a  (t\v 
miles  from  his  own,  and  had  the  logs  ready 
for  their  house.  They  numbered  men  enough 
to  build  without  calling  in  their  neighbors, 
and  immediately  put  up  a  cabin  on  the  north 
fork  of  the  Sangamon  River.  The  family  thus 
housed  and  sheltered,  one  more  bit  of  filial 
work  remained  for  Abraham  before  assuming 
his  virile  independence.  With  the  assistance 
of  John  Hanks,  he  plowed  fifteen  acres,  and 
split,  from  the  tall  walnut-trees  of  the  prime- 
val forest,  enough  rails  to  surround  them  with 
a  fence.  Little  did  either  dream,  while  engaged 
in  this  work,  that  the  day  would  come  when 
the  appearance  of  John  Hanks  in  a  public 
meeting,  with  two  of  these  rails  on  his  shoul- 
der, would  electrify  a  State  convention,  and 
kindle  throughout  the  country  a  contagious 
and  unreasoning  enthusiasm,  whose  results 
would  reach  to  endless  generations. 
in. 
Illinois  in  1830. 
The  Lincolns  arrived  in  Illinois  just  in  time 
to  entitle  themselves  to  be  called  pioneers. 
When,  in  after  years,  associations  of  "  Old 
Settlers  "  began  to  be  formed  in  Central  Illi- 
nois, the  qualification  for  membership  agreed 
upon  by  common  consent  was  a  residence  in 
the  country  before  "the  winter  of  the  deep 
snow."  This  was  in  1830-31^  season  of  such 
extraordinary  severity  that  it  has  formed  for 
half  a  century  a  recognized  date  in  the  middle 
counties  of  Illinois,  among  those  to  whom  in 
those  days  diaries  and  journals  were  unknown. 
The  snowfall  began  in  the  Christmas  holidays 
and  continued  until  the  snow  was  three  feet 
deep  on  level  ground.  Then  came  a  cold  rain, 
freezing  as  it  fell  until  a  thick  crust  of  ice 
gathered  over  the  snow.  The  weather  became 
intensely  cold,  the  mercury  sinking  to  twelve 
degrees  below  zero,  Fahrenheit,  and  remaining 
there  for  two  weeks.*  The  storm  came  on 
with  such  suddenness  that  all  who  were 
abroad  had  great  trouble  in  reaching  their 
homes,  and  many  perished.  One  mant  relates 
that  he  and  a  friend  or  two  were  out  in  a 
hunting  party  with  an  ox-team.     They  had 
*  Rev.  J.  M.  Sturtevant,  "Address  to  Old  Settlers  of 
Morgan  County." 
t  Thomas  Buckles,  of  McLean  County.
2S 
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
collected  a  wagon-load  of  game  and  were  on 
their  way  home  when  the  storm  struck  them. 
After  they  had  gone  four  miles  they  were  com- 
pelled to  abandon  their  wagon  ;  the  snow  fell 
in  heavy  masses  "  as  if  thrown  from  a  scoop- 
shovel'' ;  arriving  within  two  miles  of  their 
habitation,  they  were  forced  to  trust  to  the 
instinct  of  their  animals  and  reached  home 
hanging  to  the  tails  of  their  steers.  Not  all 
were  so  fortunate.  Some  were  found  weeks 
afterwards  in  the  snow-drifts,  their  flesh  gnawed 
by  famished  wolves ;  and  the  fate  of  others 
was  unknown  until  the  late  spring  sunshine 
revealed  their  resting-places.  To  those  who 
escaped,  the  winter  was  tedious  and  terrible. 
It  is  hard  for  us  to  understand  the  isolation 
to  which  such  weather  condemns  the  pioneer. 
For  weeks  they  remained  in  their  cabins  hop- 
ing for  some  mitigation  of  the  frost.  When  at 
last  they  were  driven  out  by  the  fear  of  fam- 
ine, the  labor  of  establishing  communications 
was  enormous.  They  finally  made  roads  by 
"  wallowing  through  the  snow,"  as  an  Illinois 
historian  expresses  it,*  and  going  patiently 
over  the  same  track  until  the  snow  was  tram- 
pled hard  and  rounded  like  a  turnpike.  These 
roads  lasted  far  into  the  spring,  when  the  snow 
had  melted  from  the  plains,  and  wound  for 
miles  like  threads  of  silver  over  the  rich  black 
loam  of  the  prairies.  After  that  winter  game 
was  never  again  so  plentiful  in  the  State.  Much 
still  remained,  of  course,  but  it  never  recov- 
ered entirely  from  the  rigors  of  that  season 
and  the  stupid  enterprise  of  the  pioneer  hunt- 
ers, who,  when  they  -came  out  of  their  snow- 
beleaguered  cabins,  began  chasing  and  killing 
the  starved  deer  by  herds.  It  was  easy  work  ; 
the  crust  of  the  snow  was  strong  enough  to 
bear  the  weight  of  men  and  dogs,  but  the 
slender  hoofs  of  the  deer  would  after  a  few 
bounds  pierce  the  treacherous  surface.  This 
destructive  slaughter  went  on  until  the  game 
grew  too  lean  to  be  worth  the  killing.  All 
sorts  of  wild  animals  grew  scarce  from  that 
winter.  Old  settlers  say  that  the  slow  cowardly 
breed  of  prairie  wolves,  which  used  to  be 
caught  and  killed  as  readily  as  sheep,  disap- 
peared about  that  time  and  none  but  the  fleeter 
and  stronger  survived.t 
Only  once  since  then  has  nature  shown  such 
extravagant  severity  in  Illinois,  and  that  was  on 
a  day  in  the  winter  of  1836,  known  to  Illinois^ 
ans  as  "  the  sudden  change."  At  noon  on  the 
20th  of  December,  after  a  warm  and  rainy 
morning,  the  ground  being  covered  with  mud 
and  slush,  the  temperature  fell  instantly  forty 
degrees.  A  man  riding  into  Springfield  for  a 
marriage  license  says  a  roaring  and  crackling 
wind  came  upon  him  and  the  rain  drops  drip- 
*  Power, "  Early  Settlers  of  Sangamon  County,"  p.  62. 
t  "  Old  Times  in  McLean  County,"  p.  414. 
ping  from  his  bridle-reins  and  beard  changed 
in  a  second  into  jingling  icicles.  He  rode  hastily 
into  the  town  and  arrived  in  a  few  minutes  at 
his  destination ;  but  his  clothes  were  frozen  like 
sheet  iron,  and  man  and  saddle  had  to  be  taken 
into  the  house  together  to  be  thawed  apart. 
Geese  and  chickens  were  caught  by  the  feet  and 
wings  and  frozen  to  the  wet  ground.  A  drove 
of  a  thousand  hogs,  which  were  being  driven 
to  St.  Louis,  rushed  together  for  warmth,  and 
became  piled  in  a  great  heap.  Those  inside 
smothered  and  those  outside  froze,  and  the 
ghastly  pyramid  remained  there  on  the  prairie 
for  weeks:  the  drovers  barely  escaped  with  their 
lives.  Men  killed  their  horses,  disemboweled 
them,  and  crept  into  the  cavity  of  their  bodies 
to  escape  the  murderous  wind.J 
The  pioneer  period  of  Illinois  was  ending 
as  Thomas  Lincoln  and  his  tall  boy  drove 
their  ox-cart  over  the  Indiana  line.  The  pop- 
ulation of  the  State  had  grown  to  157,447.  It 
still  clung  to  the  wooded  borders  of  the  water- 
courses; scattered  settlements  were  to  be 
found  all  along  the  Mississippi  and  its  ahiuents, 
from  where  Cairo  struggled  for  life  in  the 
swamps  of  the  Ohio  to  the  bustling  and  busy 
mining  camps  which  the  recent  discovery  of 
lead  had  brought  to  Galena.  A  line  of  villages 
from  Alton  to  Peoria  dotted  the  woodland 
which  the  Illinois  River  had  stretched,  like  a 
green  baldric,  diagonally  across  the  bosom  of 
the  State.  Then  there  were  long  reaches  of 
wilderness  before  you  came  to  Fort  Dearborn, 
where  there  was  nothing  as  yet  to  give  prom- 
ise of  that  miraculous  growth  which  was  soon 
to  make  Chicago  a  proverb  to  the  world. 
There  were  a  few  settlements  in  the  fertile 
region  called  the  Military  Tract ;  the  southern 
part  of  the  State  was  getting  itself  settled 
here  and  there.  People  were  coming  in  freely 
to  the  Sangamon  country.  But  a  grassy  soli- 
tude stretched  from  Galena  to  Chicago,  and 
the  upper  half  of  the  State  generally  was  a  wil- 
derness. The  earlier  emigrants,  principally  of 
the  poorer  class  of  Southern  farmers,  shunned 
the  prairies  with  something  of  a  supersti- 
tious dread.  They  preferred  to  pass  the  first 
years  of  their  occupation  in  the  wasteful 
and  laborious  work  of  clearing  a  patch  of 
timber  for  corn,  rather  than  enter  upon  those 
rich  savannas  which  were  ready  to  break  into 
fertility  at  the  slightest  provocation  of  culture. 
Even  so  late  as  1835,  writes  Mr.  J.  F.  Speed, 
"  no  one  dreamed  the  prairies  would  ever  be 
occupied."    It  was    thought    they  would   be 
%  Although  all  inhabitants  of  Sangamon  County  are 
acquainted  with  these  facts,  and  we  have  often  heard 
them  and  many  others  like  them  from  the  lips  of  eye-wit- 
nesses, we  have  preferred  to  cite  only  those  which  are 
given  in  the  careful  and  conscientious  compilation  en- 
titled "  The  Early  Settlers  of  Sangamon  County,"  by 
the  Rev.  John  Carroll  Power.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
used  perpetually  as  grazing-fields  for  stock. 
For  years  the  long  processions  of  "  movers  " 
wound  over  those  fertile  and  neglected  plains, 
taking  no  hint  of  the  wealth  suggested  by  the 
rank  luxuriance  of  vegetable  growth  around 
them,  the  carpet  of  brilliant  flowers  spread 
over  the  verdant  knolls,  the  strong,  succulent 
grass  that  waved  in  the  breeze,  full  of  warm 
and  vital  odor,  as  high  as  the  waist  of  a  man. 
In  after  years,  when  the  emigration  from  the 
Northern  and  Eastern  States  began  to  pour 
in,  the  prairies  were  rapidly  taken  up,  and  the 
relative  growth  and  importance  of  the  two 
sections  of  the  State  were  immediately  re- 
versed. Governor  Ford,  writing  about  1847, 
attributes  this  result  to  the  fact  that  the  best 
class  of  Southern  people  were  slow  to  emigrate 
to  a  State  where  they  could  not  take  their 
slaves ;  while  the  settlers  from  the  North,  not 
being  debarred  by  the  State  Constitution  from 
bringing  their  property  with  them,  were  of  a 
different  class.  "  The  northern  part  of  the 
State  was  settled  in  the  first  instance  by  wealthy 
farmers,  enterprising  merchants,  millers,  and 
manufacturers.  They  made  farms,  built  mills, 
churches,  school-houses,  towns,  and  cities,  and 
constructed  roads  and  bridges  as  if  by  magic; 
so  that  although  the  settlements  in  the  south- 
ern part  of  the  State  are  from  twenty  to  fifty 
years  in  advance  on  the  score  of  age,  yet  are 
they  ten  years  behind  in  point  of  wealth  and 
all  the  appliances  of  a  higher  civilization."  * 
At  the  time  which  we  are  specially  consid- 
ering, however,  the  few  inhabitants  of  the 
south  and  the  center  were  principally  from 
what  came  afterwards  to  be  called  the  border 
slave  States.  They  were  mostly  a  simple, 
neighborly,  unambitious  people,  contented 
with  their  condition,  living  upon  plain  fare, 
and  knowing  not  much  of  anything  better. 
Luxury  was,  of  course,  unknown;  even  wealth, 
if  it  existed,  could  procure  few  of  the  comforts 
of  refined  life.  But  there  was  little  or  no 
money  in  circulation.  Exchanges  were  effected 
by  the  most  primitive  forms  of  barter,  and 
each  family  must  rely  chiefly  upon  itself  for 
the  means  of  living.  The  neighbors  would 
lend  a  hand  in  building  a  cabin  for  a  new- 
comer ;  after  that  he  must  in  most  cases  shift 
for  himself.  Many  a  man  coming  from  an 
old  community,  and  imperfectly  appreciating 
the  necessities  of  pioneer  life,  has  found  sud- 
denly, on  the  approach  of  winter,  that  he 
must  learn  to  make  shoes  or  go  barefoot. 
The  furniture  of  their  houses  was  made  with 
an  axe  from  the  trees  of  the  forest.  Their 
clothing  was  all  made  at  home.  The  buck- 
skin days  were  over  to  a  great  extent,  though 
an  occasional  hunting-shirt  and  pair  of  moc- 
casins were  still  seen.  But  flax  and  hemp  had 
*  "  History  of  Illinois,"  p.  280. 
begun  to  be  cultivated,  and  as  the  v.- 
were  killed  off  the  sheep-folds  increased,  and 
garments  resembling  those  of  civilization 
were  spun  and  woven,  and  cut  and  sewed,  by 
the  women  of  the  family.  When  a  man  had  a 
suit  of  jeans  colored  with  butternut-juice,  and 
his  wife  a  dress  of  linsey,  they  could  appear 
with  the  best  at  a  wedding  or  a  quilting  frolic. 
The  superfluous  could  not  have  been  said  to 
exist  in  a  community  where  men  made  their 
own  buttons,  where  women  dug  roots  in  the 
woods  to  make  their  tea  with,  where  many 
children  never  saw  a  stick  of  candy  until  after 
they  were  grown.  The  only  sweetmeats 
known  were  those  a  skillful  cook  could  com- 
pose from  the  honey  plundered  from  the  hol- 
low oaks  where  the  wild  bees  had  stored  it. 
Yet  there  was  withal  a  kind  of  rude  plenty  ; 
the  woods  swarmed  with  game,  and  after 
swine  began  to  be  raised,  there  was  the  bacon 
and  hoe-cake  which  any  south-western  farmer 
will  say  is  good  enough  for  a  king.  The 
greatest  privation  was  the  lack  of  steel  im- 
plements. His  axe  was  as  precious  to  the 
pioneer  as  his  sword  to  the  knight  errant. 
Governor  Reynolds  speaks  of  the  panic  felt 
in  his  father's  family  when  the  axe  was  dropped 
into  a  stream.  A  battered  piece  of  tin  wTas 
carefully  saved  and  smoothed,  and  made 
into  a  grater  for  green  corn. 
They  had  their  own  amusements,  of  course; 
no  form  of  society  is  without  them,  from  the 
anthropoid  apes  to  the  Jockey  Club.  As  to  the 
grosser  and  ruder  shapes  taken  by  the  diver- 
sions of  the  pioneers,  we  will  let  Mr.  Herndon 
speak — their  contemporary  annalist  and 
ardent  panegyrist :  "  These  men  could  shave 
a  horse's  mane  and  tail,  paint,  disfigure,  and 
offer  it  for  sale  to  the  owner.  They  could 
hoop  up  in  a  hogshead  a  drunken  man,  they 
themselves  being  drunk,  put  in  and  nail  fast  the 
head,  and  roll  the  man  down  hill  a  hundred  feet 
or  more.  They  could  run  down  a  lean  and 
hungry  wild  pig,  catch  it,  heat  a  ten-plate 
stove-furnace  hot,  and  putting  in  the  pig,  could 
cook  it,  they  dancing  the  while  a  merry  jig." 
Wild  oats  of  this  kind  seem  hardly  compati- 
ble with  a  harvest  of  civilization,  but  it  is 
contended  that  such  of  these  roysterers  as 
survived  their  stormy  beginnings  became  de- 
cent and  serious  citizens.  Indeed,  Mr.  Hern- 
don insists  that  even  in  their  hot  youth  they 
showed  the  promise  of  goodness  and  piety. 
"  They  attended  church,  heard  the  sermon, 
wept  and  prayed,  shouted,  got  up  and  fought 
an  hour,  and  then  went  back  to  prayer,  just  as 
the  spirit  moved  them."  t  The  camp-meeting 
may  be  said,  with  no  irreverent  intention,  to 
have  been  their  principal  means  of  intellectual 
t  William    H.   Herndon's    speech   at  Old   Settlers' 
Meeting,  Menard  County.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
excitement.  The  circuit  preachers  were  for  a 
long  time  the  only  circulating  medium  of 
thought  and  emotion  that  kept  the  isolated 
settlements  from  utter  spiritual  stagnation. 
They  were  men  of  great  physical  and  moral 
endurance,  absolutely  devoted  to  their  work, 
which  they  pursued  in  the  face  of  every  hard- 
ship and  discouragement.  Their  circuits  were 
frequently  so  great  in  extent  that  they  were 
forced  to  be  constantly  on  the  route ;  what 
reading  they  did  was  done  in  the  saddle. 
They  received  perhaps  fifty  dollars  from  the 
missionary  fund  and  half  as  much  more  from 
their  congregations,  paid  for  the  most  part  in 
necessaries  of  life.*  Their  oratory  was  suited 
to  their  longitude,  and  was  addressed  exclu- 
sively to  the  emotions  of  their  hearers.  It  was 
often  very  effective,  producing  shouts  and 
groans  and  genuflections  among  the  audience 
at  large,  and  terrible  convulsions  among  the 
more  nervous  and  excitable.  We  hear  some- 
times of  a  whole  congregation  prostrated  as 
by  a  hurricane,  flinging  their  limbs  about  in 
furious  contortions,  with  wild  outcries.  To 
this  day  some  of  the  survivors  of  that  period 
insist  that  it  was  the  spirit  of  the  Almighty, 
and  nothing  less,  that  thus  manifested  itself. 
The  minister,  however,  did  not  always  share 
in  the  delirium  of  his  hearers.  Governor  Rey- 
nolds tells  us  of  a  preacher  in  Sangamon 
County,  who,  before  his  sermon,  had  set  a 
wolf-trap  in  view  of  his  pulpit.  In  the  midst 
of  his  exhortations  his  keen  eyes  saw  the  dis- 
tant trap  collapse,  and  he  continued  in  the 
same  intonation  with  which  he  had  been 
preaching,  "  Mind  the  text,  brethren,  till  I  go 
kill  that  wolf!  "  With  all  the  failings  and  ec- 
centricities of  this  singular  class  of  men,  they 
did  a  great  deal  of  good,  and  are  entitled  to 
especial  credit  among  those  who  conquered 
the  wilderness.  The  emotions  they  excited 
did  not  all  die  away  in  the  shouts  and  contor- 
tions of  the  meeting.  Not  a  few  of  the  cabins 
in  the  clearings  were  the  abode  of  a  fervent 
religion  and  an  austere  morality.  Many  a 
traveler,  approaching  a  rude  hut  in  the  woods 
in  the  gathering  twilight,  distrusting  the  gaunt 
and  silent  family  who  gave  him  an  unsmiling 
welcome,  the  bare  interior,  the  rifles  and 
knives  conspicuously  displayed,  has  felt  his 
fears  vanish  when  he  sat  down  to  supper,  and 
the  master  of  the  house,  in  a  few  fervent 
words,  invoked  the  blessing  of  heaven  on  the 
meal. 
There  was  very  little  social  intercourse ;  a 
visit  was  a  serious  matter,  involving  the  ex- 
penditure of  days  of  travel.  It  was  the  custom 
among  families,  when  the  longing  for  the  sight 
of  kindred  faces  was  too  strong  to  withstand, 
to  move  in  a  body  to  the  distant  settlement 
"  Old  Times  in  McLean  County,"  p.  194. 
where  their  relatives  lived  and  remain  with 
them  for  a  month  at  a  time.  The  claims  of 
consanguinity  were  more  regarded  than  now. 
Almost  the  only  festivities  were  those  which 
accompanied  weddings,  and  these  were,  of 
course,  of  a  primitive  kind.  The  perils  and 
adventures  through  which  the  young  pioneers 
went  to  obtain  their  brides  furnish  forth  thou- 
sands of  tales  by  Western  firesides.  Instead  of 
taking  the  rosy  daughter  of  a  neighbor,  the 
enterprising  bachelor  would  often  go  back  to 
Kentucky,  and  pass  through  as  many  adven- 
tures in  bringing  his  wife  home  as  a  returning 
crusader  would  meet  between  Beirut  and 
Vienna.  If  she  was  a  young  woman  who  re- 
spected herself,  the  household  gear  she  would 
insist  on  bringing  would  entail  an  Iliad  of 
embarrassments.  An  old  farmer  of  Sangamon 
County  still  talks  of  a  feather-bed  weighing 
fifty-four  pounds  with  which  his  wife  made 
him  swim  six  rivers  under  penalty  of  desertion. 
It  was  not  always  easy  to  find  a  competent 
authority  to  perform  the  ceremony.  A  justice 
in  McLean  County  lived  by  the  bank  of  a 
river,  and  his  services  were  sometimes  required 
by  impatient  lovers  on  the  other  bank  when 
the  waters  were  too  torrential  to  cross.  In 
such  cases,  being  a  conscientious  man,  he  al- 
ways insisted  that  they  should  ride  into  the 
stream  far  enough  for  him  to  discern  their 
features,  holding  torches  to  their  faces  by  night 
and  by  storm.  The  wooing  of  those  days  was 
prompt  and  practical.  There  was  no  time  for 
the  gradual  approaches  of  an  idler  and  more 
conventional  age.  It  is  related  of  one  Stout, 
one  of  the  legendary  Nimrods  of  Illinois,  who 
was  well  and  frequently  married,  that  he  had 
one  unfailing  formula  of  courtship.  He  always 
promised  the  ladies  whose  hearts  he  was  be- 
sieging that  "  they  should  live  in  the  timber 
where  they  could  pick  up  their  own  firewood." 
Theft  was  almost  unknown;  property,  being 
so  hard  to  get,  was  jealously  guarded,  as  we 
have  already  noticed  in  speaking  of  the  settle- 
ment of  Kentucky.  The  pioneers  of  Illinois 
brought  with  them  the  same  rigid  notions  of 
honesty  which  their  environment  maintained. 
A  man  in  Macoupin  County  left  his  wagon, 
loaded  with  corn,  stuck  in  the  prairie  mud 
for  two  weeks  near  a  frequented  road.  When 
he  returned  he  found  some  of  his  corn  gone, 
but  there  was  money  enough  tied  in  the 
sacks  to  pay  for  what  was  taken.  Men  carry- 
ing bags  of  silver  from  the  towns  of  Illinois 
to  St.  Louis  rather  made  a  display  of  it,  as 
it  enhanced  their  own  importance,  and  there 
was  no  fear  of  robbery.  There  were  of 
course  no  locks  on  the  cabin  doors,  and  the 
early  merchants  sometimes  left  their  stores 
unprotected  for  days  together  when  they 
went  to  the  nearest  city  to  replenish   their
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
stocks.  Of  course  there  were  rare  exceptions 
to  this  rule,  but  a  single  theft  alarmed  and 
excited  a  whole  neighborhood.  When  a  crime 
was  traced  home,  the  family  of  the  criminal 
were  generally  obliged  to  remove. 
There  were  still,  even  so  late  as  the  time  to 
which  we  are  referring,  two  alien  elements  in 
the  population  of  the  State  —  the  French  and 
the  Indians.  The  French  settlements  about 
Kaskaskia  retained  much  of  their  national 
character,  and  the  pioneers  from  the  South 
who  visited  them  or  settled  among  them 
never  ceased  to  wonder  at  their  gayety,  their 
peaceable  industry  and  enterprise,  and  their 
domestic  affection,  which  they  did  not  care 
to  dissemble  and  conceal  like  their  shy 
and  reticent  neighbors.  It  was  a  daily  spec- 
tacle, which  never  lost  its  strangeness  for  the 
Tennesseeans  and  Kentuckians,  to  see  the 
Frenchman  returning  from  his  work  greeted 
by  his  wife  and  children  with  embraces  of 
welcome  "at  the  gate  of  his  door-yard,  and 
in  view  of  all  the  villagers."*  The  natural 
and  kindly  fraternization  of  the  Frenchmen 
with  the  Indians  was  also  a  cause  of  wonder 
to  the  Americans.  The  friendly  intercourse 
between  them,  and  their  occasional  inter- 
marriages, seemed  little  short  of  monstrous 
to  the  ferocious  exclusiveness  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon. f  The  Indians  in  the  central  part  of 
Illinois  cut  very  little  figure  in  the  reminis- 
cences of  the  pioneers ;  they  occupied  much 
the  same  relation  to  them  as  the  tramp  to  the 
housewife  of  to-day.  The  Winnebago  war  in 
1827  and  the  Black  Hawk  war  in  1831  dis- 
turbed only  the  northern  portions  of  the  State. 
A  few  scattered  and  vagrant  lodges  of  Potta- 
watomies  and  Kickapoos  were  all  the  pioneers 
of  Sangamon  and  neighboring  counties  ever 
met.  They  were  spared  the  heroic  struggle 
of  the  advance-guard  of  civilization  in  other 
States.  A  woman  was  sometimes  alarmed  by 
a  visit  from  a  drunken  savage ;  poultry  and 
pigs  occasionally  disappeared  when  they  were 
in  the  neighborhood;  but  life  was  not  dark- 
ened by  the  constant  menace  of  massacre.  A 
few  years  earlier,  indeed,  the  relations  of  the 
two  races  had  been  more  strained,  as  may  be 
inferred  from  an  act  passed  by  the  territorial 
Legislature  in  18 14,  offering  a  reward  of  fifty 
dollars  to  any  citizen  or  ranger  who  should  kill 
or  take  any  depredating  Indian  .J  As  only  two 
dollars  was  paid  for  killing  a  wolf,  it  is  easy  to 
see  hew  the  pioneers  regarded  the  forest  folk 
in   point    of   relative    noxiousness.    But    ten 
*  Hall's  "  Sketches  of  the  West." 
t  Michelet  notices  this  exclusiveness  of  the  English, 
and  inveighs  against  it  in  his  most  lyric  style.  "  Crime 
contre  la  nature  !  Crime  contre  l'humanite  !  II  sera 
expie  par  la  sterility  de  l'esprit." 
X  "  Life  and  Times  of  Ninian  Edwards,"  p.  163. 
years  later  a  handful  only  of  the  KickapOOfl 
remained  in  Sangamon  County,  the  specter 
of  the  vanished  people.  A  chief  named 
Machina  came  one  day  to  a  family  who  were 
clearing  a  piece  of  timber,  and  issued  an 
order  of  eviction  in  these  words  :  "  Too  much 
come  white  man.  T'other  side  Sangamon." 
He  threw  a  handful  of  dried  leaves  in  the  air 
to  show  how  he  would  scatter  the  pale  faces, 
but  he  never  fulfilled  his  threats  further  than 
to  come  in  occasionally  and  ask  for  a  drink 
of  whisky.  That  such  trivial  details  are  still 
related,  only  shows  how  barren  of  incident 
was  the  life  of  these  obscure  founders  of 
a  great  empire.  Any  subject  of  conversa- 
tion, any  cause  of  sensation,  was  a  godsend. 
When  V annoy  murdered  his  wife  in  Spring- 
field, whole  families  put  on  their  best  clothes 
and  drove  fifty  miles  through  bottomless  mud 
and  swollen  rivers  to  see  him  hanged. 
It  is  curious  to  see  how  naturally  in  such  a 
state  of  things  the  fabric  of  political  society 
developed  itself  from  its  germ.  The  county 
of  Sangamon  was  called  by  an  act  of  the  Leg- 
islature in  182 1  out  of  a  verdant  solitude  of 
half  a  million  acres,  inhabited  by  a  few  fami- 
lies. An  election  for  county  commissioners 
was  ordered ;  three  men  were  chosen ;  they 
came  together  at  the  cabin  of  John  Kelly,  at 
Spring  Creek.  He  was  a  roving  bachelor  from 
North  Carolina,  devoted  to  the  chase,  who 
had  built  his  hut  three  years  before  on  the 
margin  of  this  green-bordered  rivulet,  where 
the  deer  passed  by  in  hundreds,  going  in  the 
morning  from  the  shady  banks  of  the  Sanga- 
mon to  feed  on  the  rich  green  grass  of  the 
prairie,  and  returning  in  the  twilight.  He  was 
so  delighted  with  this  hunters'  paradise  §  that 
he  sent  for  his  brothers  to  join  him.  They 
came  and  brought  their  friends,  and  so  it  came 
about  that  in  this  immense  county  of  over 
eight  hundred  square  miles  in  extent  the  set- 
tlement of  John  Kelly  at  Spring  Creek  was 
the  only  place  where  there  was  shelter  for  the 
commissioners  ;  and  thus  it  became  the  tem- 
porary county-seat,  duly  described  in  the 
official  report  of  the  commissioners  as  "  a 
certain  point  in  the  prairie  near  John  Kelly's 
field,  on  the  waters  of  Spring  Creek,  at  a  stake 
marked  Z  and  D  (the  initials  of  the  commis- 
sioners) to  be  the  temporary  seat  of  justice 
for  said  county;  and  we  do  further  agree  that 
the  said  county-seat  be  called  and  known  by 
the  name  of  Springfield";  and  in  this  manner 
the  future  capital  received  that  hackneyed 
title,  when  the  distinctive  and  musical  name 
of  Sangamon  was  ready  to  their  hands.  The 
same  day  they  agreed  with  John  Kelly  to  build 
them  a  court-house,  for  which  they  paid  him 
§  Power,  "Early  Settlers  of  Sangamon  County," 
P-33-
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
forty-two  dollars  and  fifty  cents.  In  twenty- 
four  days  the  house  was  built  —  one  room  of 
rough  logs,  the  jury  retiring  to  any  sequestered 
glade  they  fancied  for  their  deliberation.  They 
next  ordered  the  building  of  a  jail,  which  cost 
just  twice  as  much  money  as  the  court-house, 
for  obvious  reasons.  Constables  and  over- 
seers of  the  poor  were  appointed,  and  all  the 
machinery  of  government  prepared  for  the 
population  which  was  hourly  expected.  It 
was  taken  for  granted  that  malefactors  would 
come  and  the  constables  have  employment, 
and  the  poor  they  would  have  always  with 
them,  when  once  they  began  to  arrive.  This 
was  only  a  temporary  arrangement,  but  when, 
a  year  or  two  later,  the  time  came  to  fix  upon 
a  permanent  seat  of  justice  for  the  county, 
the  resources  of  the  Spring  Creek  men  were 
equal  to  the  emergency.  When  the  commis- 
sioners came  to  decide  on  the  relative  merits 
of  Springfield  and  another  site  a  few  miles 
away,  they  led  them  through  brake,  through 
brier,  by  mud  knee- deep  and  by  water-courses 
so  exasperating  that  the  wearied  and  baffled 
officials  declared  they  would  seek  no  further, 
and  Springfield  became  the  county-  seat  for  all 
time ;  and  greater  destinies  were  in  store  for 
it  through  means  not  wholly  dissimilar.  Na- 
ture had  made  it  merely  a  pleasant  hunting- 
ground;  the  craft  and  the  industry  of  its  first 
settlers  made  it  a  capital. 
The  courts  which  were  held  in  these  log 
huts  were  as  rude  as  might  be  expected;  yet 
there  is  evidence  that  although  there  was  no 
superfluity  of  law  or  of  learning,  justice  was 
substantially  administered.  The  lawyers  came 
mostly  from  Kentucky,  though  an  occasional 
New  Englander  confronted  and  lived  down  the 
general  prejudice  against  his  region  and  ob- 
tained preferment.  The  profits  of  the  profession 
were  inconceivably  small.  One  early  State's  At- 
torney* describes  his  first  circuit  as  a  tour  of 
shifts  and  privations  not  unlike  the  wander- 
ings of  a  mendicant  friar.  In  his  first  county 
he  received  a  fee  of  five  dollars  for  prosecuting 
the  parties  to  a  sanguinary  affray.  In  the  next 
he  was  equally  successful,  but  barely  escaped 
drowning  in  Spoon  River.  In  the  third  there 
were  but  two  families  at  the  county-seat,  and 
no  cases  on  the  docket.  Thence  he  journeyed 
across  a  trackless  prairie  sixty  miles,  and  at 
Quincy  had  one  case  and  gained  five  dollars. 
In  Pike  County  our  much-enduring  jurist  took 
no  cash,  but  found  a  generous  sheriff  who  enter- 
tained him  without  charge.  "  He  was  one  of 
nature's  noblemen,  from  Massachusetts,"  writes 
the  grateful  prosecutor.  The  lawyers  in  what 
was  called  good  practice  earned  less  than  a 
street-sweeper  to-day.  It  is  related  that  the 
famous  S.  A.  Douglas  once  traveled  from 
*  "  History  of  Sangamon  County,"  p.  83. 
Springfield  to  Bloomington  and  made  an  ex- 
travagant speech,  and  having  gained  his  case 
received  a  fee  of  five  dollars.f  In  such  a 
state  of  things  it  was  not  to  be  wondered  at 
that  the  technicalities  of  law  were  held  in 
somewhat  less  veneration  than  what  the 
pioneer  regarded  as  the  essential  claims  of 
justice.  The  infirmities  of  the  jury  system 
gave  them  less  annoyance  than  it  gives  us. 
Governor  Ford  mentions  a  case  where  a  gang 
of  horse-thieves  succeeded  in  placing  one  of 
their  confederates  upon  a  jury  which  was  to 
try  them  ;  but  he  was  soon  brought  to  reason 
by  his  eleven  colleagues  making  preparations 
to  hang  him  to  the  rafters  of  the  jury  room. 
The  judges  were  less  hampered  by  the  limita- 
tions of  their  legal  lore  than  by  their  fears  of 
a  loss  of  popularity  as  a  result  of  too  definite 
charges  in  civil  suits,  or  too  great  severity  in 
criminal  cases.  They  grew  very  dexterous  in 
avoiding  any  commitment  as  to  the  legal  or 
moral  bearings  of  the  questions  brought  be- 
fore them.  They  generally  refused  to  sum  up, 
or  to  comment  upon  evidence ;  when  asked 
by  the  counsel  to  give  instructions  they  would 
say,  "  Why,  gentlemen,  the  jury  understand 
this  case  as  well  as  you  or  I.  They  will  do  jus- 
tice between  the  parties."  %  One  famous  judge, 
who  was  afterwards  governor,  when  sentenc- 
ing a  murderer,  impressed  it  upon  his  mind, 
and  wished  him  to  inform  his  friends,  that  it 
was  the  jury  and  not  the  judge  who  had 
found  him  guilty,  and  then  asked  him  on  what 
day  he  would  like  to  be  hanged.  It  is  need- 
less to  say  that  the  bench  and  bar  were  not 
all  of  this  class.  There  were  even  at  that 
early  day  lawyers,  and  not  a  few,  who  had 
already  won  reputation  in  the  older  States, 
and  whose  names  are  still  honored  in  the  pro- 
fession. Cook,  McLean,  Edwards,  Kane, 
Thomas,  Reynolds,  and  others,  the  earliest 
lawyers  of  the  State,  have  hardly  been  since 
surpassed  for  learning  and  ability. 
In  a  community  where  the  principal  men 
were  lawyers,  where  there  was  as  yet  little 
commerce,  and  industrial  enterprise  was  un- 
known, it  was  natural  that  one  of  the  chief 
interests  of  life  should  be  the  pursuit  of  pol- 
itics. The  young  State  swarmed  with  politi- 
cians ;  they  could  be  found  chewing  and 
whittling  at  every  cross-roads  inn ;  they  were 
busy  at  every  horse-race,  arranging  their  plans 
and  extending  their  acquaintance;  around 
the  burgoo- pot  of  the  hunting  party  they 
discussed  measures  and  candidates;  they  even 
invaded  the  camp-meeting  and  did  not  disdain 
the  pulpit  as  a  tribune.  Of  course  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  organization  in  the  pioneer 
t"The    Good    Old    Times    in    McLean    County," 
P-  255- 
%  Ford's  "  History  of  Illinois,"  p.  83.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
days.  Men  were  voted  for,  to  a  great  extent, 
independently  of  partisan  questions  affecting 
the  nation  at  large,  and  in  this  way  the  higher 
offices  of  the  State  were  filled  for  many  years 
by  men  whose  personal  character  compelled 
the  respect  and  esteem  of  the  citizens.  The 
year  1826  is  generally  taken  as  the  date  which 
witnessed  the  change  from  personal  to  partisan 
politics,  though  several  years  more  elapsed 
before  the  rule  of  conventions  came  in,  which 
put  an  end  to  individual  candidacy.  In  that 
year  Mr.  Cook,  who  had  long  represented  the 
State  in  Congress  with  singular  ability  and 
purity,  was  defeated  by  Governor  Duncan, 
the  candidate  of  the  Jackson  men,  on  account 
of  the  vote  given  by  Cook  which  elected 
John  Quincy  Adams  to  the  Presidency.  The 
bitter  intolerance  of  the  Jackson  party  natu- 
rally caused  their  opponents  to  organize  against 
them,  and  there  were  two  parties  in  the  State 
from  that  time  forward.  The  change  in  polit- 
ical methods  was  inevitable,  and  it  is  idle  to 
deplore  it;  but  the  former  system  gave  the 
better  men  in  the  new  State  a  power  and 
prominence  which  they  have  never  since  en- 
joyed. Such  men  as  Governor  Edwards,  who 
came  with  the  prestige  of  a  distinguished  fam- 
ily connection,  a  large  fortune,  2  good  educa- 
tion, and  a  distinction  of  manners  and  of 
dress, — ruffles,  gold  buttons,  and  fair-topped 
boots, —  which  would  hardly  have  been  par- 
doned a  few  years  later ;  and  Governor  Coles, 
who  had  been  private  secretary  to  Madison, 
and  was  familiar  with  the  courts  of  Europe, 
a  man  as  notable  for  his  gentleness  of  manners 
as  for  his  nobility  of  nature,  could  never 
have  come  so  readily  and  easily  to  the  head 
of  the  government  after  the  machine  of  the 
caucus  had  been  perfected.  Real  ability  then 
imposed  itself  with  more  authority  upon  the 
ignorant  and  unpretending  politicians  from 
the  back  timber ;  so  that  it  is  remarked  by 
those  who  study  the  early  statutes  of  Illinois 
that  they  are  far  better  drawn  up,  better  edited, 
than  those  of  a  later  period,*  when  illiterate 
intriguants,  conscious  of  the  party  strength 
behind  them,  insisted  on  shaping  legislation 
according  to  their  own  fancy.  The  men  of 
cultivation  wielded  an  influence  in  the  Legisla- 
ture entirely  out  of  proportion  to  theirnumbers, 
as  the  ruder  sort  of  pioneers  were  naturally  in 
a  large  majority.  The  type  of  a  not  uncom- 
mon class  in  Illinois  tradition  was  a  member 
from  the  South  who  could  neither  read  nor 
write,  and  whose  apparently  ironical  patro- 
nymic was  Grammar.  When  first  elected  he  had 
never  worn  anything  but  leather;  but  regard- 
ing his  tattered  buckskin  as  unfit  for  the  garb 
of  a  lawgiver,  he  and  his  sons  gathered  hazel- 
nuts enough  to  barter  at  the  nearest  store  for 
*  Ford's  "  History  of  Illinois,"  p.  31. 
a  Utw  yards  of  blue  strouding  such  as  the 
Indians  used  for  breech-clouts.  When  he 
came  home  with  his  purchase  and  had  called 
together  the  women  of  the  settlement  to  make 
his  clothes,  it  was  found  that  there  was  only 
material  enough  for  a  very  short  coat  and  a 
long  pair  of  leggins,  and  thus  attired  he  went 
to  Kaskaskia,  the  territorial  capital.  Uncouth 
as  was  his  appearance,  he  had  in  him  the 
raw  material  of  a  politician.  He  invented  a 
system  —  which  was  afterwards  adopted  by 
many  whose  breeches  were  more  fashionably 
cut  —  of  voting  against  every  measure  which 
was  proposed.  If  it  failed,  the  responsibility 
was  broadly  shared  ;  if  it  passed  and  was  pop- 
ular, no  one  would  care  who  voted  against  it; 
if  it  passed  and  did  not  meet  the  favor  of  the 
people,  John  Grammar  could  vaunt  his  fore- 
sight. Between  the  men  like  Coles  and  the 
men  like  Grammar  there  was  a  wide  interval, 
and  the  average  was  about  what  the  people 
of  the  State  deserved  and  could  appreciate, 
A  legislator  was  as  likely  to  suffer  for  doing 
right  as  for  doing  wrong.  Governor  Ford,  in 
his  admirable  sketch  of  the  early  history  of  the 
State,  mentions  two  acts  of  the  Legislature,  both 
of  them  proper  and  beneficial,  as  unequaled 
in  their  destructive  influence  upon  the  great 
folks  of  the  State.  One  was  a  bill  for  a  loan 
to  meet  the  honest  obligations  of  the  common- 
wealth, commonly  called  "  the  Wiggins  loan  " ; 
and  the  other  was  a  law  to  prevent  bulls  of 
inferior  size  and  breed  from  running  at  large. 
This  latter  set  loose  all  the  winds  of  popular 
fury  :  it  was  cruel,  it  was  aristocratic  ;  it  was 
in  the  interest  of  rich  men  and  pampered 
foreign  bulls;  and  it  ended  the  career  of  many 
an  aspiring  politician  in  a  blast  of  democratic 
indignation  and  scorn.  The  politician  who 
relied  upon  immediate  and  constant  contact 
with  the  people  certainly  earned  all  the  emol- 
uments of  office  he  received.  His  successes 
were  hardly  purchased  by  laborious  affability. 
"  A  friend  of  mine,"  says  Ford,  "  once  in- 
formed me  that  he  intended  to  be  a  candidate 
for  the  Legislature,  but  would  not  declare 
himself  until  just  before  the  election,  and  as- 
signed as  a  reason  that  it  was  so  very  hard  to 
be  clever  for  a  long  time  at  once."  Before  the 
caucus  had  eliminated  the  individual  initiative, 
there  was  much  more  of  personal  feeling  in 
elections.  A  vote  against  a  man  had  some- 
thing of  offense  in  it,  and  sometimes  stirred 
up  a  defeated  candidate  to  heroic  vengeance. 
In  1827  the  Legislature  elected  a  State  treas- 
urer after  an  exciting  contest,  and  before  the 
members  had  left  the  house  the  unsuccessful 
aspirant  came  in  and  soundly  thrashed,  one 
after  the  other,  four  of  the  representatives  who 
had  voted  against  him.f  Such  energy  was  sure 
tFord,  p.  81.
LIXCOLN  AS  PIOXEER. 
to  meet  its  reward,  and  he  was  soon  after 
made  clerk  of  the  Circuit  Court.  It  is  related 
by  old  citizens  of  Menard  County,  as  a  cir- 
cumstance greatly  to  the  credit  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  that  when  he  was  a  candidate  for  the 
Legislature  a  man  who  wanted  his  vote  for 
another  place  walked  to  the  polls  with  him 
and  ostentatiously  voted  for  him,  hoping  to 
receive  his  vote  in  return.  Lincoln  voted 
against  him,  and  the  act  was  much  admired 
by  those  who  saw  it. 
One  noticeable  fact  is  observed  in  relation 
to  the  politicians  of  the  day  —  their  careers 
were  generally  brief.  Superannuation  came 
early.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  last  century 
and  the  first  half  of  this,  men  were  called  old 
whom  we  should  regard  as  in  the  prime  of  life. 
'When  the  friends  of  Washington  were  first 
pressing  the  Presidency  upon  him  in  1788,  he 
urged  his  "  advanced  age  "  as  an  imperative 
reason  for  declining  it :  he  was  fifty-six  years 
old.  When  Ninian  Edwards  was  a  candidate 
for  Governor  of  Illinois  in  1826,  he  was  only 
fifty-one,  and  yet  he  considered  it  necessary 
in  his  published  addresses  to  refer  to  the 
charge  that  he  was  too  old  for  the  place,  and, 
while  admitting  the  fact  that  he  was  no  longer 
young,  to  urge  in  extenuation  that  there  are 
some  old  things, —  like  old  whisky,  old  bacon, 
and  old  friends, —  which  are  not  without  their 
merits.  Even  so  late  as  1848,  we  find  a  re- 
markable letter  from  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  was 
then  in  Congress,  bearing  upon  the  same 
point.  His  partner,  William  H.  Herndon,  had 
written  him  a  letter,  complaining  that  the  old 
men  in  Sangamon  County  were  unwilling  to  let 
the  young  ones  have  any  opportunity  to  dis- 
tinguish themselves.  To  this  Lincoln  answers 
in  his  usual  tone  of  grave  kindness  : 
"  The  subject  of  your  letter  is  exceedingly  pain- 
ful to  me  ;  and  I  cannot  but  think  there  is  some  mis- 
take in  your  impression  of  the  motives  of  the  old  men. 
I  suppose  I  am  now  one  of  the  old  men,  and  I  declare 
on  my  veracity,  which  I  think  is  good  with  you,  that 
nothing  could  afford  me  more  satisfaction  than  to  learn 
that  you  and  others  of  my  young  friends  at  home  were 
doing  battle  in  the  contest  and  endearing  themselves 
to  the  people  and  taking  a  stand  far  above  any  I  have 
ever  been  able  to  reach  in  their  admiration.  I  cannot 
conceive  that  other  old  men  feel  differently.  Of  course  I 
cannot  demonstrate  what  I  say ;  but  I  was  young  once, 
and  I  am  sure  I  was  never  ungenerously  thrust  back." 
The  man  who  thus  counsels  petulant  youth 
with  the  experienced  calmness  of  age  was 
thirty-nine  years  old.  A  state  of  society  where 
one  could  at  that  age  call  himself  or  be  called 
by  others  an  old  man,  is  proved  by  that  fact 
alone  to  be  one  of  wearing  hardships  and 
early  decay  of  the  vital  powers.  The  surviv- 
ors of  the  pioneers  stoutly  insist  upon  the  con- 
trary view.    "  It  was  a  glorious  life,"  says  one 
old  patriarch  j  "  men  would  fight  for  the  love 
of  it,  and  then  shake  hands  and  be  friends ; 
there  is  nothing  like  it  now."  Another  says, 
"  I  never  enjoy  my  breakfast  now  as  I  used 
to,  when  T  got  up  and  ran  down  a  deer  before 
I  could  have  anything  to  eat."  But  they  see 
the  past  through  a  rosy  mist  of  memory,  trans- 
figured by  the  eternal  magic  of  youth.  The 
sober  fact  is  that  the  life  was  a  hard  one, 
with  few  rational  pleasures,  few  wholesome 
appliances.  The  strong  ones  lived,  and  some 
even  attained  great  length  of  years;  but  to 
many  age  came  early  and  was  full  of  infirmity 
and  pain.  If  we  could  go  back  to  what  our 
forefathers  endured  in  clearing  the  Western 
wilderness,  we  could  then  better  appreciate 
our  obligations  to  them.  It  is  detracting  from 
the  honor  which  is  their  due  to  say  that  their 
lives  had  much  of  happiness  or  comfort,  or 
were  in  any  respect  preferable  to  our  own. 
IV. 
NEW    SALEM. 
During  the  latter  part  of  "  the  winter  of  the 
deep  snow,"  Abraham  became  acquainted 
with  one  Denton  Offutt,  an  adventurous  and 
discursive  sort  of  merchant,  with  more  irons 
in  the  fire  than  he  could  well  manage.  He 
wanted  to  take  a  flat-boat  and  cargo  to  New 
Orleans,  and  having  heard  that  Hanks  and 
Lincoln  had  some  experience  of  the  river,  he 
insisted  on  their  joining  him.  John  Johnston 
was  afterwards  added  to  the  party,  probably 
at  the  request  of  his  foster-brother,  to  share 
in  the  golden  profits  of  the  enterprise;  for 
fifty  cents  a  day,  and  a  contingent  dividend 
of  twenty  dollars  apiece,  seemed  like  a  prom- 
ise of  immediate  opulence  to  the  boys.  In 
the  spring,  when  the  rivers  broke  up  and  the 
melting  snows  began  to  pour  in  torrents  down 
every  ravine  and  gully,  the  three  young  men 
paddled  down  the  Sangamon  in  a  canoe  to 
the  point  where  Jamestown  now  stands ; 
whence  they  walked  five  miles  to  Springfield, 
where  Offutt  had  given  them  rendezvous. 
They  met  him  at  Elliott's  tavern  and  far  from 
happy.  Amid  the  multiplicity  of  his  engage- 
ments he  had  failed  to  procure  a  fiat-boat, 
and  the  first  work  his  new  hands  must  do 
was  to  build  one,  They  cut  the  timber,  with 
frontier  innocence,  from  "  Congress  land,"* 
and  soon  had  a  serviceable  craft  afloat,  with 
which  they  descended  the  current  of  the  San- 
gamon to  New  Salem,  a  little  village  which 
seems  to  have  been  born  for  the  occasion,  as 
it  came  into  existence  just  before  the  arrival 
of  Lincoln,  flourished  for  seven  years  while  he 
remained  one  of  its  citizens,  and  died  soon  after 
*  Lamon,  p.  79.
LINCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
MODEL    OF    LINCOLN  S     INVENTION     IN     THE     PATENT    OFFICE,    WASHINGTON 
JSk  %fiL'M@©1&M'i& 
mwtoMhWSSER  ©f  blotto®  \ie&©^l©.— 
ffff- — ' 
?i.9>a 
REDUCED    FAC-SIMILES   OF    DRAWINGS    IN   PATENT    OFFICE. 
he  went  away.  His  introduction  to  his  fellow- 
citizens  was  effected  in  a  peculiar  and  some- 
what striking  manner.  Offutt's  boat  had  come 
to  serious  embarrassment  on  Rutledge's  mill- 
dam,  and  the  unwonted  incident  brought  the 
entire  population  to  the  water's  edge.  They 
spent  a  good  part  of  the  day  watching  the 
hapless  flat-boat,  resting  midships  on  the  dam, 
the  forward  end  in  the  air  and  the  stern  tak- 
ing in  the  turbid  Sangamon  water.  Nobody 
knew  what  to  do  with  the  disaster  except 
"  the  bow-oar,"  who  is  described  as  a  gigan- 
tic youth  "with  his  trousers  rolled  up  some 
five  feet,"  who  was  wading  about  the  boat 
and  rigging  up  some  undescribed  contrivance 
by  which  the  cargo  was  unloaded,  the  boat 
tilted  and  the  water  let  out  by  boring  a  hole 
through  the  bottom,  and  everything  brought 
safely  to  moorings  below  the  dam.  This  ex- 
ploit gained  for  young  Lincoln  the  enthusi- 
astic admiration  of  his  employer,  and  turned 
his  own  mind  in  the  direction  of  an  invention 
which  he  afterwards  patented  "  for  lifting 
vessels  over  shoals."  The  model  on  which  he 
obtained  this  patent, —  a  little  boat  whittled 
by  his  own  hand  in  1849,  after  he  had  become 
prominent  as  a  lawyer  and  politician, — is  still 
shown  to  visitors  at  the  Department  of  the 
Interior.  We  have  never  learned  that  it  has 
served  any  other  purpose. 
They  made  a  quick  trip  down  the  Sanga- 
mon, the  Illinois,  and  the  Mississippi  rivers. 
Although  it  was  but  a  repetition  in  great  part 
of  the  trip  young  Lincoln  had  made  with 
Gentry,  it  evidently  created  a  far  deeper  im- 
pression on  his  mind  than  the  former  one. 
The  simple  and  honest  words  of  John  Hanks 
leave  no  doubt  of  this.  At  New  Orleans,  he 
said,  they  saw  for  the  first  time  "  negroes 
chained,  maltreated,  whipped,  and  scourged. 
Lincoln  saw  it ;  his  heart  bled  ;  said  nothing 
much,  was  silent,  looked  bad.  I  can  say,  know- 
ing it,  that  it  was  on  this  trip  that  he  formed 
his  opinions  of  slavery.    It  run  its  iron  in  him
LTXCOLN  AS  PIONEER. 
then  and  there.  May,  1S31.  I  have  heard  him 
say  so  often."  *  The  sight  of  men  in  chains  was 
intolerable  to  him.  Ten  years  after  this  he 
made  another  journey  by  water  with  his 
friend  Joshua  Speed,  of  Kentucky.  Writing  to 
Speed  about  it  after  the  lapse  of  fourteen  years, 
he  says  : 
"In  1S41  you  and  I  had  together  a  tedious  low- 
water  trip  on  a  steamboat  from  Louisville  to  St. 
Louis.  You  may  remember,  as  I  well  do,  that  from 
Louisville  to  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  there  were  on 
board  ten  or  a  dozen  slaves  shackled  together  with 
irons.  That  sight  was  a  continual  torment  to  me,  and 
I  see  something  like  it  every  time  I  touch  the  Ohio 
or  any  other  slave  border.  It  is  not  fair  for  you  to 
assume  that  I  have  no  interest  in  a  thing  which  has, 
and  which  continually  exercises,  the  power  of  making 
me  miserable.'' 
There  have  been  several  ingenious  attempts 
to  show  the  origin  and  occasion  of  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's anti-slavery  convictions.  They  seem  to 
us  an  idle  waste  of  labor.  These  sentiments 
came  with  the  first  awakening  of  his  mind 
and  conscience,  and  were  roused  into  active 
life  and  energy  by  the  sight  of  fellow-creatures 
in  chains  on  the  wharf  at  New  Orleans. 
The  party  went  up  the  river  in  the  early 
summer,  and  separated  in  St.  Louis.  Abra- 
ham walked  in  company  with  John  Johnston 
from  St.  Louis  to  Coles  County,  and  spent  a 
few  weeks  there  with  his  father,  who  had 
made  another  migration  the  year  before.  His 
final  move  was  to  Goose  Nest  Prairie,  where 
he  died  in  1851,!  at  the  age  of  seventy-three 
years,  after  a  life  which,  though  not  successful 
in  any  material  or  worldly  point  of  view,  was 
probably  far  happier  than  that  of  his  illustrious 
son,  being  unvexed  by  enterprise  or  ambition. 
Abraham  never  lost  sight  of  his  parents.  He 
continued  to  aid  and  befriend  them  in  every 
way,  even  when  he  could  ill  afford  it,  and 
when  his  benefactions  were  imprudently  used. 
He  not  only  comforted  their  declining  years 
with  every  aid  his  affection  could  suggest, 
but  he  did  everything  in  his  power  to  assist 
his  stepbrother  Johnston,  a  hopeless  task 
enough.  The  following  rigidly  truthful  and  yet 
kindly  letters  will  show  how  mentor-like  and 
masterful,  as  well  as  generous,  were  the  rela- 
tions that  Mr.  Lincoln  held  to  these  friends 
and  companions  of  his  childhood  : 
"  Dear  Johnston  :  Your  request  for  eighty  dollars 
I  do  not  think  it  best  to  comply  with  now.  At  the 
various  times  when  I  have  helped  you  a  little,  you 
have  said  to  me,  '  We  can  get  along  very  well  now,' 
but  in  a  very  short  time  I  find  you  in  the  same  diffi- 
culty again.    Now  this  can  only  happen  by  some  de- 
*  Lamon,  p.  83. 
t  His  grave,  a  mile  and  a  half  west  of  the  town  of 
Farmington,  Illinois,  is  surmounted  by  an  appropriate 
monument  erected  by  his  grandson,  the  Hon.  Robert 
T.  Lincoln. 
feet  in  your  conduct.  What  that  defect  is  I  think  I 
know.  You  are  not  lazy  and  still  you  are  an  idler.  I 
doubt  whether,  since  I  saw  you,  you  have  done  a  good 
whole  day's  work  in  any  one  day.  You  do  not  very 
much  dislike  to  work,  and  still  you  do  not  work  much, 
merely  because  it  does  not  seem  to  you  that  you  could 
get  much  for  it.  This  habit  of  uselessly  wasting  time 
is  the  whole  difficulty,  and  it  is  vastly  important  to 
you,  and  still  more  so  to  your  children,  that  you 
should  break  the  habit.  It  is  more  important  to  them 
because  they  have  longer  to  live,  and  can  keep  out  of 
an  idle  habit  before  they  are  in  it  easier  than  they  can 
get  out  after  they  are  in. 
"  You  are  now  in  need  of  some  money;  and  what  I 
propose  is  that  you  shall  go  to  work  '  tooth  and  nail ' 
for  somebody  who  will  give  you  money  for  it.  Let 
father  and  your  boys  take  charge  of  things  at  home, 
prepare  for  a  crop,  and  make  the  crop ;  and  you  go  to 
work  for  the  best  money  wages,  or  in  discharge  of 
any  debt  you  owe,  that  you  can  get ;  and  to  secure  a 
fair  reward  for  your  labor,  I  now  promise  you  that 
for  every  dollar  you  will,  between  this  and  the  first  of 
next  May,  get  for  your  own  labor,  either  in  money  or 
as  discharging  your  own  indebtedness,  I  will  then  give 
you  one  other  dollar.  By  this,  if  you  hire  yourself  at 
ten  dollars  a  month,  from  me  you  will  get  ten  more, 
making  twenty  dollars  a  month  for  your  work.  In 
this  I  do  not  mean  that  you  shall  go  off  to  St.  Louis, 
or  the  lead  mines,  or  the  gold  mines  in  California ; 
but  I  mean  for  you  to  go  at  it  for  the  best  wages  you 
can  get  close  to  home,  in  Coles  County.  Now,  if  you 
will  do  this  you  will  soon  be  out  of  debt,  and,  what  is 
better,  you  will  have  a  habit  that  will  keep  you  from 
getting  in  debt  again.  But  if  I  should  now  clear  you 
out  of  debt,  next  year  you  would  be  just  as  deep  in  as 
ever.  You  say  you  would  almost  give  your  place  in 
heaven  for  seventy  or  eighty  dollars.  Then  you  would 
value  your  place  in  heaven  very  cheap,  for  I  am  sure 
you  can,  with  the  offer  I  make,  get  the  seventy  or 
eighty  dollars  for  four  or  five  months'  work.  You  say 
if  I  will  furnish  you  the  money  you  will  deed  me  the 
land,  and  if  you  don't  pay  the  money  back  you  will 
deliver  possession.  Nonsense.  If  you  can't  live  now 
with  the  land,  how  will  you  then  live  without  it?  You 
have  always  been  kind  to  me,  and  I  do  not  mean  to 
be  unkind  to  you.  On  the  contrary,  if  you  will  but 
follow  my  advice,  you  will  find  it  worth  more  than 
eighty  times  eighty  dollars  to  you." 
Here  is  a  later  epistle,  still  more  graphic 
and  terse  in  statement,  which  has  the  unusual 
merit  of  painting  both  confessor  and  penitent 
to  the  life : 
"  Shelbyville,  Nov.  4,  1851. 
"  Dear  Brother:  When  I  came  into  Charleston, 
day  before  yesterday,  I  learned  that  you  are  anxious 
to  sell  the  land  where  you  live  and  move  to  Missouri. 
I  have  been  thinking  of  this  ever  since,  and  cannot 
but  think  such  a  notion  is  utterly  foolish.  What  can 
you  do  in  Missouri  better  than  here  ?  Is  the  land  any 
richer  ?  Can  you  there,  any  more  than  here,  raise  corn 
and  wheat  and  oats  without  work  ?  Will  anybody  there, 
any  more  than  here,  do  your  work  for  you  ?  If  you 
intend  to  go  to  work,  there  is  no  better  place  than  right 
where  you  are  ;  if  you  do  not  intend  to  go  to  work,  you 
cannot  get  along  anywhere.  Squirming  and  crawling 
about  from  place  to  place  can  do  no  good.  You  have 
raised  no  crop  this  year,  and  what  you  really  want  is 
to  sell  the  land,  get  the  money,  and  spend  it.  Part 
with  the  land  you  have,  and,  my  life  upon  it,  you  will 
never  after  own  a  spot  big  enough  to  bury  you  in. 
Half  you  will  get  for  the  land  you  wMl  spend  in  moving 
to  Missouri,  and  the  other  half  you  will  eat  and  drink 
and  wear  out,  and  no  foot  of  land  will  be  bought. 
Now,  I  feel  it  is  my  duty  to  have  no  hand  in  such  a  piece
THE    QUESTIONER    OF  THE   SPHINX.  37 
of  foolery.   I  feel  that  it  is  so  even  on  your  own  ac-  He  had  the  same  disadvantages  that  they  had. 
count,   and  particularly  on  mother's    account.     The  He                     in  the  mifJst  fjf  povcrty  and  j 
eastern  forty  acres  I  intend  to  keep  for  mother  whde  u                                  i       'JL   a*.                      • 
she  lives;  if  you  will  not  cultivate  it,  it  will  rent  for  rance  J   he  was  Poisoned  with   the   enervating 
enough  to  support  her ;  at  least,  it  will  rent  for  some-  malaria  of  the    Western  woods,  as  all  his  fel- 
thing.    Her  dower  in  the  other  two  forties  she  can  let  lows  were,  and  the    consequences   of  it   wen- 
you  have,  and  no  thanks  to  me.    Now,  do  not  misun-  seen  in  his  character  and  conduct  to  the  close 
derstand  this  letter.    I  do  not  write  it  in  any  unkind-  f  ,  •      Vf        «    .    ,        ,      ,        ,                      , 
— -     I  write  it  in  order,  if  possible,  to  get  you  to  face  of  ms   llfe-     But    he    had,  what    very    few    of 
ncss. 
the  truth,  which  truth  is,  you  are  destitute  because  you  them   possessed  any    glimmering  notion  of,  a 
have  idled  away  all  your  time.    Your  thousand  pre-  fixed   and   inflexible  will   to  succeed.    He  did 
tenses  deceive   nobody  but  yourself.    Go  to  work  is  nQt  ]oye  WQrk   probably   any  better  than  yohn 
the  only  cure  for  your  case.  T  ,       .  T     '  i,       ,      i1       i  ir       J 
J  J  J  ohnston  j  but  he  had  an  innate  self-respect. 
A   volume  of  disquisition    could   not  put  and  a  consciousness  that  his  self  was  worthy 
more  clearly  before  the  reader  the  difference  of  respect,  that  kept  him  from  idleness  as  it 
between  Abraham  Lincoln  and  the  common  kept  him  from  all  other  vices,  and  made  him 
run  of  Southern  and  Western  rural  laborers,  a  better  man  every  year  that  he  lived. 
(To  be  continued.) 
ON   THE   LIFE-MASK    OF   ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 
THIS  bronze  doth  keep  the  ve^  form  and  mold 
Of  our  great  martyr's  face.    Yes,  this  is  he  : 
That  brow  all  wisdom,  all  benignity ; 
That  human,  humorous  mouth  •  those  cheeks  that  hold 
Like  some  harsh  landscape  all  the  summer's  gold ; 
That  spirit  fit  for  sorrow,  as  the  sea 
For  storms  to  beat  on ;  the  lone  agony 
Those  silent,  patient  lips  too  well  foretold. 
Yes,  this  is  he  who  ruled  a  world  of  men 
As  might  some  prophet  of  the  elder  day, — 
Brooding  above  the  tempest  and  the  fray 
With  deep-eyed  thought  and  more  than  mortal  ken. 
A  power  was  his  beyond  the  touch  of  art 
Or  armed  strength  :    It  was  his  mighty  heart. 
jR.  W.  Gilder. 
THE    QUESTIONER   OF    THE   SPHINX. 
BEHOLD  me  !  with  swift  foot  across  the  land, 
Where  desert  winds  are  sleeping,  I  am  come 
To  wrest  a  secret  from  thee ;  O  thou,  dumb, 
And  careless  of  my  puny  lips'  command. 
Cold  orbs !  mine  eyes  a  weary  world  have  scanned. 
Slow  ear !  in  mine  rings  ever  a  vexed  hum 
Of  sobs  and  strife.    Of  joy,  mine  earthly  sum 
Is  buried  as  thy  form  in  burning  sand. 
The  wisdom  of  the  nations  thou  hast  heard ; 
The  circling  courses  of  the  stars  hast  known. 
Awake  !    Thrill !    By  my  feverish  presence  stirred, 
Open  thy  lips  to  still  my  human  moan. 
Breathe  forth  one  glorious  and  mysterious  word, 
Though  I  should  stand,  in  turn,  transfixed, —  a  stone ! 
M.  Virginia  Donaghe.
THE    MINISTER'S    CHARGE; 
OR,  THE  APPRENTICESHIP   OF   LEMUEL  BARKER. 
F.Y    W,    D.    HOWELLS, 
Author  of  "  Venetian  Life,*'  "A  Modern  Instance,"  "  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,"  etc. 
XXVIII. 
EMUEL  went  through  the  next  day 
*  I  in  that  license  of  revolt  which  every 
human  soul  has  experienced  in 
some  measure  at  some  time.  We 
look  back  at  it  afterwards,  and  see 
.  it  a  hideous  bondage. 
— — &     But  for  the  moment  Lem- 
uel rejoiced  in  it;  and  he  abandoned  himself 
boldly  to  thoughts  that  had  hitherto  been  a 
furtive  and  trembling  rapture. 
In  the  afternoon,  when  he  was  most  at  lei- 
sure, he  walked  down  to  the  Public  Garden, 
and  found  a  seat  on  a  bench  near  the  fountain 
where  the  Venus  had  shocked  his  inexperience 
the  first  time  he  saw  her  •  he  remembered  that 
simple  boy  with  a  smile  of  pity,  and  then  went 
back  into  his  cloud  of  revery.  There,  safely 
hid  from  trouble  and  wrong,  he  told  his  ideal 
how  dear  she  was  to  him,  and  how  she  had 
shaped  and  governed  his  life,  and  made  it 
better  and  nobler  from  the  first  moment  they 
had  met.  The  fumes  of  the  romances  which 
he  had  read  mixed  with  the  love-born  delirium 
in  his  brain  :  he  was  no  longer  low,  but  a  hero 
of  lofty  line,  kept  from  his  rightful  place  by 
machinations  that  had  failed  at  last,  and  now 
he  was  leading  her,  his  bride,  into  the  ancient 
halls  which  were  to  be  their  home,  and  the 
source  of  beneficence  and  hope  to  all  the  poor 
and  humbly-born  around  them.  His  eyes  were 
so  full  of  this  fantastic  vision,  the  soul  of  his 
youth  dwelt  so  deeply  within  this  dream-built 
tabernacle,  that  it  was  with  a  shock  of  anguish 
he  saw  coming  up  the  walk  towards  him  the 
young  girl  herself.  His  airy  structure  fell  in 
ruins  around  him;  he  was  again  common  and 
immeasurably  beneath  her ;  she  was  again  in 
her  own  world,  where,  if  she  thought  of  him 
at  all,  it  must  be  as  a  squalid  vagabond  and 
the  accomplice  of  a  thief.  If  he  could  have 
escaped,  he  would,  but  he  could  not  move ; 
he  sat  still  and  waited,  with  fallen  eyes,  for  her 
to  pass  him. 
At  sight  of  him  she  hesitated  and  wavered; 
then  she  came  towards  him,  and  at  a  second 
impulse  held  out  her  hand,  smiling  with  a  ra- 
diant pleasure. 
"  I  didn't  know  it  was  you,  at  first,"  she 
said.  "It  seems  so  strange  to  see  any  one 
that  I  know !  " 
"  I  didn't  expect  to  see  you,  either,"  he 
stammered  out,  getting  somehow  upon  his  feet 
and  taking  her  hand,  while  his  face  burned, 
and  he  could  not  keep  his  eyes  on  hers;  "  I 
—  didn't  know  you  were  here." 
"  I've  only  been  here  a  few  days.  I'm 
drawing  at  the  Museum.  I've  just  got  back. 
Have  you  been  here  all  summer  ?  " 
"Yes  —  all  summer.  I  hope  you've  been 
well  —  I  suppose  you've  been  away   " 
"  Yes,  I've  just  got  back,"  she  repeated. 
"  Oh,  yes  !    I  meant  that !  " 
She  smiled  at  his  confusion,  as  kindly  as  the 
ideal  of  his  day-dream.  "  I've  been  spending 
the  summer  with  Madeline,  and  I've  spent 
most  of  it  out-of-doors,  sketching.  Have  you 
been  well  ?  " 
"Yes  —  not  very;  oh,  yes,  I'm  well   "  She 
had  begun  to  move  forward  with  the  last  ques- 
tion, and  he  found  himself  walking  with  her. 
"  Did  she  —  has  Miss  Swan  come  back  with 
you  ?  "  he  asked,  looking  her  in  the  eyes  with 
more  question  than  he  had  put  into  his  words. 
"  No,  I  don't  think  she'll  come  back  this 
winter,"  said  the  girl.  "  You  know,"  she  went 
on, coloring  a  little,  "  that  she's  married  now  ?  " 
"  No,"  said  Lemuel. 
"  Yes.  To  Mr.  Berry.  And  I  have  a  letter 
from  him  for  you." 
"  Was  he  there  with  you,  this  summer  ?  " 
asked  Lemuel,  ignoring  alike  Berry's  marriage 
and  the  letter  from  him. 
"  Oh,  yes  ;  of  course!  And  I  liked  him  bet- 
ter than  I  used  to.  He  is  very  good,  and  if 
Madeline  didn't  have  to  go  so  far  West  to 
live  !  He  will  know  how  to  appreciate  her, 
and  there  are  not  many  who  can  do  that ! 
Her  father  thinks  he  has  a  great  deal  of  abil- 
ity.   Yes,  if  Madeline  had 'to  get  married ! " 
She  talked  as  if  convincing  and  consoling 
herself,  and  there  was  an  accent  of  loneliness 
in  it  all  that  pierced  Lemuel's  preoccupation; 
he  had  hardly  noted  how  almost  pathetically 
glad  she  was  to  see  him.  "  You'll  miss  her 
here,"  he  ventured. 
"  Oh,  I  don't  dare  to  think  of  it!  "  cried  the 
girl.  "  I  don't  know  what  I  shall  do  !  When  I 
first  saw  you,  just  now,  it  brought  up  Madeline 
Copyright,  1885,  by  W.  D.  Howells.     All  rights  reserved.
THE  FOOD    QUESTION  IN  AMERICA    AND   EUROPE. 
fold,  the  ratio  to  the  square  mile  being  a  lit- 
tle less  than  twenty  in  this  country  and  one 
hundred  and  sixty  in  Europe. 
This  area  is  divided  into  fifteen  empires, 
kingdoms,  or  states,  omitting  the  petty  states 
of  eastern  Europe,  which  are  separated  from 
each  other  by  differences  of  race,  creed,  and 
language.  Their  commerce  is  obstructed 
among  themselves  by  as  many  different  sys- 
tems of  duties  upon  imports  as  there  are  states. 
The  natural  outlet  for  the  crowded  population 
of  central  Europe  might  be  in  southern  Russia 
and  in  the  fertile  sections  of  Asiatic  Turkey, 
were  the  relations  of  these  several  states  to 
the  eastern  country  the  same  as  those  of  the 
Eastern  States  of  this  country  to  those  of  the 
West.  There  is  land  enough,  and  to  spare ; 
but  the  armies  of  Europe  are  sustained  in  or- 
der to  prevent  this  very  expansion  of  the  peo- 
ple; and  the  misgovernment  of  the  Turk,  which 
renders  Asia  Minor  almost  a  howling  wilder- 
ness, is  protected  by  the  mutual  jealousies  of 
these  very  states,  which  are  thus  being  de- 
stroyed by  their  own  standing  armies. 
As  war  becomes  more  scientific,  it  becomes 
more  costly.  Victory  rests  not  only  on  pow- 
der and  iron,  but  yet  more  on  bread  and  beef. 
It  may  have  been  the  German  sausage  by 
which  France  wras  beaten,  quite  as  much  as 
the  German  rifle. 
The  food  question  in  Europe  may  be  one 
of  possible  revolution  and  repudiation  of  na- 
tional debts,  and  of  the  disruption  of  nations 
as  they  now  exist ;  and  to  this  branch  of  the 
victualing  department  attention  may  well  be 
called,  because  its  conditions  are  so  greatly  in 
contrast  to  those  of  the  United  States;  but  this 
phase  of  the  question  will  be  treated  separ- 
ately in  a  subsequent  article.  May  we  not  find 
in  these  costly  armies,  excessive  debts,  and  ex- 
cessive taxes  not  only  the  cause  of  pauper 
wages,  but  also  the  cause  of  the  ineffectual 
and  costly  quality  of  so-called  "pauper  labor"? 
May  there  not  also  be  found  in  these  figures 
the  incentives  to  socialism,  to  communism,  and 
to  anarchy  ?  What  hope  for  men  and  women, 
the  whole  of  whose  product  would  barely  suf- 
fice for  subsistence,  when  ten,  twenty,  and  per- 
haps even  thirty  per  cent,  is  diverted  from 
their  own  use,  and  even  food  is  denied  them 
sufficient  to  maintain  health  and  strength,  in 
order  that  these  great  armies  maybe  sustained? 
The  victualing  department  is  therefore  pre- 
sented in  these  three  phases  : 
First.  In  our  own  country  the  only  question 
is  how  to  save  the  waste  of  our  abundance, 
and  how  to  teach  not  only  the  working  peo- 
ple, but  even  the  prosperous,  the  right  meth- 
ods of  obtaining  a  good  and  wholesome  sub- 
sistence at  less  cost  in  money  than  they  now 
spend  for  a  poor  and  dyspeptic  one. 
Second.  In  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  the 
victualing  department  underlies  a  system  of 
land  tenure  which  is  now  on  its  trial,  and 
which  has  led  to  such  artificial  conditions  that 
great  areas  of  good  land  have  been  thrown 
entirely  out  of  cultivation,  while  half  the  peo- 
ple are  being  fed  from  fields  from  five  thousand 
to  fifteen  thousand  miles  distant. 
Third.  Upon  the  continent  of  Europe  the 
victualing  department  stands  face  to  face  with 
a  forced  method  of  distributing  and  wasting  a 
food-product  which,  as  a  whole,  is  insufficient 
to"  maintain  the  whole  population  in  vigor  and 
health  even  if  it  were  evenly  distributed,  as 
food  must  be  equally  distributed  by  weight  if 
not  by  quality,  in  order  that  men  and  women 
may  be  equally  well  nourished. 
When  a  famished  democracy  becomes  con- 
scious of  its  power,  what  will  be  the  end  of 
privileges  which  are  not  founded  on  rights,  and 
of  national  debts  which  have  been  incurred 
by  dynasties  without  the  consent  of  the  peo- 
ple who  are  now  oppressed  by  them  ?  How 
will  standing  armies  be  disbanded,  which  now 
seem  to  be  as  incapable  of  being  sustained  as 
they  are  impossible  of  being  disarmed  ? 
Such  are  some  of  the  appalling  questions  to 
which  we  are  led  when  we  attempt  to  analyze 
the  way  in  which  men.  women,  and  children 
now  obtain  the  modicum  of  meat  and  bread 
which  they  must  have  every  day  in  order  to 
exist,  and  that  daily  ration  of  dairy  products, 
of  fruit,  of  sugar,  and  of  spice  which  is  needed 
for  common  comfort. 
There  is  but  one  element  of  life  which  ail 
have  in  common,  and  that  is  Time.  Who  can 
teach  us  how  to  use  our  time  so  as  to  obtain  the 
substantially  even  weight  of  food  which  is  nec- 
essary to  the  adequate  nutrition  and  to  the 
common  welfare  of  rich  and  poor  alike  ? 
The  writer  can  only  put  these  questions, 
and  report  the  facts  and  figures  which  he  has 
given.  Some  of  them  may  be  already  famil- 
iar to  the  readers  of  The  Century  ;  but  their 
true  significance  he  himself  hardly  compre- 
hended until  they  had  been  grouped  together 
under  the  title  of  "  The  Food  Question."' 
Edward  Atkinson.
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Vol.  XXXIII. —33.
ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 
A    HISTORY. 
BY    JOHN    G.    NICOLAY    AND    JOHN    HAY,    PRIVATE    SECRETARIES    TO    THE    PRESIDENT. 
LINCOLN     AS     SOLDIER,    SURVEYOR,    AND     POLITICIAN. 
NEW     SALEM 
CON  riNUED.   THE 
THE    TALISMAN. 
VOYAGE     OF 
several  of  them  have  given  that  description  of 
him.  He  did  one  day's  work,  acting  as  clerk 
of  a  local  election,  a  lettered  loafer  being  pretty 
E  have  anticipated  a  score    sure  of  employment  on  such  an  occasion.!  He 
of  years  in  speaking 
of  Mr.  Lincoln's  re- 
lations to  his  family. 
It  was  in  August  of 
the  year  1831   that 
he    finally    left    his 
father's     roof,     and 
swung  out  for  himself  into  the  current  of 
the  world  to  make  his  fortune  in  his  own 
way.  He  went  down  to  New  Salem  again 
to  assist  OfTutt  in  the  business  that  lively 
speculator  thought  of  establishing  there. 
He  was  more  punctual  than  either  his 
emplover  or  the  merchandise,  and  met 
with  the  usual  reward  of  punctuality  in 
being  forced  to  waste  his  time  in  wait- 
ing for  the  tardy  ones.  He  seemed  to 
the  New  Salem  people  to  be  "loafm 
t  Mrs.  Lizzie  H.  Bell  writes  of  this  incident: 
"  My  father,  Mentori  Graham,  was  on  that  day, 
as  usual,  appointed  to  be  a  clerk,  and  Mr.  Mc- 
Xamee,  who  was  to  be  the  other,  was  sick  and 
failed  to  come.  They  were  looking  around  for 
a  man  to  fill  his  place  when  my  father  noticed 
Mr.  Lincoln  and  asked  if  he  could  write.  He  an- 
swered that  '  he  could  make  a  few  rabbit  tracks. '  " 
■ 
II  7  LEDGE'S     DAM     AND    MILL,    NEW     SALEM,    ILLINOIS. 
Copyright  by  J.  (',.  Xicolay  and  John  Hay,  1886.     All  rights  reserved.
ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 
also  piloted  a  boat  down  the  Sangamon  for 
one  Dr.  Nelson,  who  had  had  enough  of  New 
Salem  and  wanted  to  go  to  Texas.  This  was 
probably  atask  not  requiring  much  pilot-craft, 
as  the  river  was  much  swollen,  and  navigators 
had  in  most  places  two  or  three  miles  of  chan- 
nel to  count  upon.    But  Offutt  and  his  goods 
He  said  that  Abe  knew  more  than  any  man 
in  the  United  States;  and  lie  was  certainly 
not  warranted  in  making  such  an  assertion, 
as  his  own  knowledge  of  the  actual  state  oi 
science  in  America  could  not  have  beer 
haustive.  He  also  said  that  Abe  could  beat 
any  man  in  the  county  running,  jumping,  or 
CABIN     ON     GOOSE-NEST     PRAIRIE,    NEAR     FARMINGTON,    ILLINOIS,    WHERE     THOMAS     LINCOLN     LIVED     AND    DIED. 
arrived  at  last,  and  Lincoln  and  he  got  them 
immediately  into  position,  and  opened  their 
doors  to  what  commerce  could  be  found  in 
New  Salem.  There  was  clearly  not  enough 
to  satisfy  the  volatile  mind  of  Mr.  Offutt,  for 
he  soon  bought  Cameron's  mill  at  the  historic 
dam,  and  made  Abraham  superintendent  also 
of  that  branch  of  the  business. 
It  is  to  be  surmised  that  Offutt  never  in- 
spired his  neighbors  and  customers  with  any 
deep  regard  for  his  solidity  of  character.  One 
of  them  says  of  him,  with  injurious  pleonasm, 
that  he  "  talked  too  much  with  his  mouth." 
A  natural  consequence  of  his  excessive  fluency 
was  soon  to  be  made  disagreeably  evident  to 
his  clerk.  He  admired  Abraham  beyond 
measure,  and  praised  him  beyond  prudence. 
"  wrastling."  This  proposition,  being  less  ab- 
stract in  its  nature,  was  more  readily  grasped 
by  the  local  mind,  and  was  not  likely  to  pass 
unchallenged. 
Public  opinion  at  New  Salem  was  formed 
by  a  crowd  of  ruffianly  young  fellows  who 
were  called  the  "  Clary's  Grove  Boys."  Once 
or  twice  a  week  they  descended  upon  the  vil- 
lage and  passed  the  day  in  drinking,  fighting, 
and  brutal  horse-play.  If  a  stranger  appeared 
in  the  place,  he  was  likely  to  suffer  a  rude  in- 
itiation into  the  social  life  of  New  Salem  at 
the  hands  of  these  jovial  savages.  Sometimes 
he  was  nailed  up  in  a  hogshead  and  rolled 
down  hill ;  sometimes  he  was  insulted  into  a 
fight  and  then  mauled  black  and  blue  :  for  de- 
spite their  pretensions  to  chivalry  they  had  no
-52 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
MENTON     GRAHAM.        (FROM     A 
OF     HIS     DAUGHTER, 
DAGl'ERREOTYl 
MRS.    LIZZIE    H. 
I     IN     POSSESSION 
BELL. ) 
scruples  about  fair  play  or  any  such  supersti- 
tions of  civilization.  At  first  they  did  not  seem 
inclined  to  molest  young  Lincoln.  His  ap- 
pearance did  not  invite  insolence  ;  his  reputa- 
tion for  strength  and  activity  was  a  greater 
protection  to  him  than  his  inoffensive  good- 
nature. But  the  loud  admiration  of  Offutt  gave 
them  umbrage.  It  led  to  dispute,  contradic- 
tions, and  finally  to  a  formal  banter  to  a  wrest- 
ling-match. Lincoln  was  greatly  averse  to  all 
this  "  wooling  and  pulling,"  as  he  called  it.  But 
Offutt's  indiscretion  had  made  it  necessary  for 
him  to  show  his  mettle.  Jack  Armstrong,  the 
leading  bully  of  the   gang,  was  selected  to 
from  any  he  had  heretofore  engaged  with. 
Seeing  he  could  not  manage  the  tall  stranger, 
his  friends  swarmed  in,  and  by  kicking  and 
tripping  nearly  succeeded  in  getting  Lincoln 
down.  At  this,  as  has  been  said  of  another 
hero,  'k  the  spirit  of  Odin  entered  into  him," 
and  putting  forth  his  whole  strength,  he  held 
the  pride  of  Clary's  Grove  in  his  arms  like  a 
child,  and  almost  choked  the  exuberant  life 
out  of  him.  For  a  moment  a  general  fight 
seemed  inevitable  ;  but  Lincoln,  standing  un- 
dismayed with  his  back  to  the  wall,  looked  so 
formidable  in  his  defiance  that  an  honest  ad- 
miration took  the  place  of  momentary  fury, 
and  his  initiation  was  over.  As  to  Armstrong, 
he  was  Lincoln's  friend  and  sworn  brother  as 
soon  as  he  recovered  the  use  of  his  larynx, 
and  the  bond  thus  strangely  created  lasted 
through  life.  Lincoln  had  no  further  occasion 
to  fight  his  own  battle  while  Armstrong  was 
there  to  act  as  his  champion.  The  two  friends, 
although  so  widely  different,  were  helpful  to 
each  other  afterwards  in  many  ways,  and 
Lincoln  made  ample  amends  for  the  liberty 
his  hands  had  taken  with  Jack's  throat,  by 
saving,  in  a  memorable  trial,  his  son's  neck 
from  the  halter. 
This  incident,  trivial  and  vulgar  as  it  may 
seem,  was  of  great  importance  in  Lincoln's 
life.  His  behavior  in  this  ignoble  scuffle  did 
the  work  of  years  for  him,  in  giving  him  the 
position  he  required  in  the  community  where 
his  lot  was  cast.  He  became  from  that  mo- 
ment, in  a  certain  sense,  a  personage,  with  a 
name  and  standing  of  his  own.  The  verdict  of 
Clary's  Grove  was  unanimous  that  he  was 
"  the  cleverest  fellow  that  had  ever  broke  into 
the  settlement."  He  did  not  have  to  be  con- 
stantly scuffling  to  guard  his  self-respect,  and 
at  the  same  time  he  gained  the  good-will  of 
the  better  sort  by  his  evident  peaceableness 
and  integrity. 
He  made  on  the  whole  a  satisfactory  clerk 
for  Mr.  Offutt,  though  his 
downright  honesty  must 
have  seemed  occasionally 
as  eccentric  in  that  position 
as  afterwards  it  did  to  his 
throw  him,  and    expected    an   easy  victory. 
But  he  soon  found  himself  in  different  hands
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
associates  at  the  bar.  Dr.  Holland  has  pre- 
served one  or  two  incidents  of  this  kind, 
which  have  their  value.  Once,  after  he  had 
sold  a  woman  a  little  bill  of  goods  and 
received  the  money,  he  found  on  looking 
over  the  account  again  that  she  had  given  him 
six  and  a  quarter  cents  too  much.  The  money 
burned  in  his  hands  until  he  locked  the  shop 
and  started  on  a  walk  of  several  miles  in  the 
night  to  make  restitution  before  he  slept.  On 
another  occasion,  after  weighing  and  deliver- 
ing a  pound  of  tea,  he  found  a  small  weight 
on  the  scales.  He  immediately  weighed  out 
the  quantity  of  tea  of  which  he  had  innocently 
defrauded  his  customer  and  went  in  search 
of  her,  his  sensitive  conscience  not  permitting 
any  delay.  To  show  that  the  young  merchant 
was  not  too  good  for  this  world,  the  same 
writer  gives  an  incident  of  his  shop-keeping 
experience  of  a  different  character.  A  rural 
bully  having  made  himself  especially  offensive 
one  day,  when  women  were  present,  by  loud 
profanity,  Lincoln  requested  him  to  be  silent. 
This  was  of  course  a  cause  of  war,  and  the 
young  clerk  was  forced  to  follow  the  incensed 
ruffian  into  the  street,  where  the  combat  was 
of  short  duration.  Lincoln  threw  him  at  once 
to  the  ground,  and  gathering  a  handful  of  the 
dog-fennel  with  which  the  roadside  was  plenti- 
fully bordered,  he  rubbed  the  ruffian's  face 
and  eyes  with  it  until  he  howled  for  mercy. 
He  did  not  howl  in  vain,  for  the  placable 
giant,  when  his  discipline  was  finished,  brought 
water  to  bathe  the  culprit's  smarting  face,  and 
doubtless  improved  the  occasion  with  quaint 
admonition. 
A  few  passages  at  arms  of  this  sort  gave 
Abraham  a  redoubtable  reputation  in  the 
neighborhood.  But  the  principal  use  he  made 
of  his  strength  and  his  prestige  was  in  the 
capacity  of  peacemaker,  an  office  which  soon 
devolved  upon  him  by  general  consent. 
Whenever  old  feuds  blossomed  into  fights  by 
Offutt's  door,  or  the  chivalry  of  Clary's  Grove 
attempted  in  its  energetic  way  to  take  the 
conceit  out  of  some  stranger,  or  a  canine 
duel  spread  contagion  of  battle  among  the 
masters  of  the  beasts,  Lincoln  usually  ap- 
peared upon  the  scene,  and  with  a  judicious 
mixture  of  force  and  reason  and  invincible 
good-nature  restored  peace. 
While  working  with  OrTutt  his  mind  was 
turned  in  the  direction  of  English  grammar. 
From  what  he  had  heard  of  it  he  thought  it  a 
matter  within  his  grasp,  if  he  could  once  fall 
in  with  the  requisite  machinery.  Consulting 
with  Menton  *  Graham,  the  schoolmaster,  in 
*  This  name  has  been  always  written  in  Illinois 
"  Minter,"  but  a  letter  from  Mr.  Graham's  daughter, 
Mrs.  Bell,  says  that  her  father's  name  is  as  given  in  the 
text. 
regard  to  it,  and  learning  the  whereabouts  of  a 
vagrant  "  Kirkham's  Grammar,"  he  set  off  at 
once  and  soon  returned  from  a  walk  of  a  dozen 
miles  with  the  coveted  prize.  He  devoted  him- 
self to  the  new  study  with  that  peculiar  in- 
tensity of  application  which  always  remained 
his  most  valuable  faculty,  and  soon  knew  all 
that  can  be  known  about  it  from  rules.  Jf<; 
seemed  surprised,  as  others  have  been,  at  the 
meager  dimensions  of  the  science  he  had  ac- 
quired and  the  ease  with  which  it  yielded  all 
there  was  of  it  to  the  student.  But  it  seemed 
no  slight  achievement  to  the  New  Salemites, 
sZT  <4   COSn^frCixSlrW        ^  W<i  W'V*.  ' 
J 9.  ~  5-^3 
-4lralam  Line*/*  HisW 
LEAF     REDUCED     IN     SIZE     FROM     ABRAHAM    LINCOLN  S    EXERCISE 
BOOK,    WRITTEN    ABOUT    HIS     SEVENTEENTH    YEAR.       PRE- 
SENTED  BY   WILLIAM    H.   HERNDON,    ESQ.,  TO   KEYES 
LINCOLN     MEMORIAL     COLLECTION. 
and  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  impression 
prevalent  of  his  learning. 
His  name  is  prominently  connected  with 
an  event  which  just  at  this  time  caused  an  ex- 
citement and  interest  in  Salem  and  the  neigh- 
boring towns  entirely  out  of  proportion  to  its 
importance.  It  was  one  of  the  articles  of  faith 
of  most  of  the  settlers  on  the  banks  of  the 
Sangamon  River  that  it  was  a  navigable  stream, 
and  the  local  politicians  found  that  they  could 
in  no  way  more  easily  hit  the  fancy  of  their 
hearers  than  by  discussing  this  assumed  fact, 
and  the  logical  corollary  derived  from  it.  that 
it  was  the  dutv  of  the  State  or  the  nation  to
254 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLX. 
■ '  ffPP 
GRAVE     OF     THOMAS     LINCOLN,    NEAR     FARMINGTON,    ILLINOIS. 
clear  out  the  snags  and  give  free  course  to  the 
commerce  which  was  waiting  for  an  opportu- 
nity to  pour  along  this  natural  highway.  At 
last  one  Captain  Vincent  Bogue,  of  Spring- 
field, determined  to  show  that  the  thing  could 
be  clone  by  doing  it.  The  first  promise  of  the 
great  enterprise  appears  in  the  "  Sangamon 
Journal  "  of  January  26,  1832,  in  a  letter  from 
the  Captain,  at  Cincinnati,  saying  he  would 
ascend  the  Sangamon  by  steam  on  the  break- 
ing up  of  the  ice.  He  asked  that  he  might  be 
met  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  by  ten  or  twelve 
men,  having  axes  with  long  handles,  to  cut 
away  the  overhanging  branches  of  the  trees 
on  the  banks.  From  this  moment  there  was 
great  excitement, —  public  meetings,  appoint- 
ment of  committees,  appeals  for  subscriptions, 
and  a  scattering  fire  of  advertisements  of 
goods  and  freight  to  be  bargained  for, —  which 
sustained  the  prevailing  interest.  It  was  a 
day  of  hope  and  promise  when  the  advertise- 
ment reached  Springfield  from  Cincinnati  that 
■•  the  splendid  upper-cabin  steamer  Talisman  " 
would  positively  start  for  the  Sangamon  on  a 
given  day.  As  the  paper  containing  this  joy- 
ous  intelligence  also  complained  that  no  mail 
liar!  reached  Springfield  from  the  east  for  three 
weeks,  it  is  easy  to  understand  the  desire  for 
more  rapid  and  regular  communications.  From 
week  to  week  the  progress  of  the  Talis man,  im- 
peded by  bad  weather  and  floating  ice,  was 
faithfully  recorded,  until  at  last  the  party  with 
long-handled  axes  went  down  to  Beardstown 
to  welcome  her.    It  is  needless  to  state  that 
Lincoln  was  one  of  the  party.  His  standing 
as  a  scientific  citizen  of  New  Salem  would 
have  been  enough  to  insure  his  selection  even 
if  he  had  not  been  known  as  a  bold  navigator. 
He  piloted  the  Talisman  safely  through  the 
windings  of  the  Sangamon,  and  Springfield 
gave  itself  up  to  extravagant  gayety  on  the 
event  that  proved  she  "  could  no  longer 
be  considered  an  inland  town."  Captain 
Bogue  announced  "  fresh  and  seasonable 
goods  just  received  per  steamboat  Talisman" 
and  the  local  poets  illuminated  the  columns 
of  the  "  Journal "  with  odes  on  her  advent.  The 
joy  was  short-lived.  The  Talisman  met  the 
natural  fate  of  steamboats  a  few  months  later, 
being  burned  at  the  St.  Louis  wharf.  Neither 
State  nor  nation  has  ever  removed  the  snags 
from  the  Sangamon,  and  no  subsequent  navi- 
gator of  its  waters  has  been  found  to  eclipse 
the  fame  of  those  earliest  ones. 
LINCOLN  IN  THE  BLACK  HAWK  WAR. 
A  new  period  in  the  life  of  Lincoln  begins 
with  the  summer  of  1832.  He  then  obtained 
his  first  public  recognition,  and  entered  upon 
the  course  of  life  which  was  to  lead  him  to  a 
position  of  prominence  and  great  usefulness. 
The  business  of  Offutt  had  gone  to  pieces, 
and  his  clerk  was  out  of  employment,  when 
Governor  Reynolds  issued  his  call  for  volun- 
teers to  move  the  tribe  of  Black  Hawk  across 
the  Mississippi.  For  several  years  the  raids 
of  the  old  Sac  chieftain  upon  that  portion  of 
his  patrimony  which  he  had  ceded  to  the 
United  States  had  kept  the  settlers  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Rock  Island  in  terror,  and 
menaced  the  peace  of  the  frontier.  In  the 
spring  of  1831  he  came  over  to  the  east  side 
of  the  river  with  a  considerable  band  of  war- 
riors, having  been  encouraged  by  secret  prom- 
ises of  cooperation  from  several  other  tribes. 
These  failed  him,  however,  when  the  time  of 
trial  arrived,  and  an  improvised  force  of  State 
volunteers,  assisted  by  General  Gaines  and  his 
detachment,  had  little  difficulty  in  compelling 
the  Indians  to  recross  the  Mississippi,  and  to 
enter  into  a  solemn  treaty  on  the  30th  of  June 
by  which  the  former  treaties  were  ratified  and 
Black  Hawk  and  his  leading  warriors  bound 
themselves  never  again  to  set  foot  on  the  east 
side  of  the  river,  without  express  permission 
from  the  President  or  the  Governor  of  Illinois. 
But  Black  Hawk  was  too  old  a  savage  to 
learn  respect  for  treaties  or  resignation  under 
fancied  wrongs.  He  was  already  approaching 
the  allotted  term  of  life.  He  had  been  king 
of  his  nation  for  more  than  forty  years.  He 
had  scalped  his  first  enemy  when  scarcely 
more  than  a  child,  having  painted  on  his 
blanket  the  blood- red  hand  which  marked  his
AHRA/fAM    IJNCOLN 
EBENEZER     PECK.        (SEE     PAGE     269.)       KROiM    A    PAINTING    BY     HEALY,     IN     1864,    IN     POSSESSION     OF     CHARLES    F.     PECK,    ESQ. 
nobility  at  fifteen  years  of  age.  Peace  under 
any  circumstances  would  doubtless  have  been 
irksome  to  him,  but  a  peace  which  forbade 
him  free  access  to  his  own  hunting-grounds 
and  to  the  graves  of  his  fathers  was  more 
than  he  could  now  school  himself  to  endure. 
He  had  come  to  believe  that  he  had  been 
foully  wronged  by  the  treaty  which  was  his 
own  act ;  he  had  even  convinced  himself  that 
'J  land  cannot  be  sold,"*  a  proposition  in  po- 
litical economy  which  our  modern  socialists 
would  be  puzzled  to  accept  or  confute.  Be- 
sides this,  the  tenderest  feelings  of  his  heart 
were  outraged  by  this  exclusion  from  his 
former  domain.  He  had  never  passed  a  year 
since  the  death  of  his  daughter  without  mak- 
*  Governor  Reynolds's  "  Life  and  Times,"' p.  325. 
ing  a  pilgrimage  to  her  grave  at  Oquawka 
and  spending  hours  in  mystic  ceremonies  and 
contemplation.!  He  was  himself  prophet  as 
well  as  king,  and  had  doubtless  his  share  of 
mania,  which  is  the  strength  of  prophets.  The 
promptings  of  his  own  broken  heart  readily 
seemed  to  him  the  whisperings  of  attendant 
spirits ;  and  day  by  day  these  unseen  incite- 
ments increased  around  him,  until  they  could 
not  be  resisted  even  if  death  stood  in  the  way. 
He  made  his  combinations  during  the  win- 
ter, and  had  it  not  been  for  the  loyal  attitude 
of  Keokuk,  he  could  have  brought  the  entire 
nation  of  the  Sacs  and  Foxes  to  the  war-path. 
As  it  was,  the  flower  of  the  young  men  came 
with  him  when,  with  the  opening  spring,  he 
t  Ford's  "  History  of  Illinois,"  p.  no.
256 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
Engraved  by  T.  Johnson,  after  a  portrait  by  Charles  B.  Kin 
roni  McKenney  and  lie 
crossed  the  river  once  more.  He  came  this 
time,  he  said,  "  to  plant  corn,"  but  as  a  pre- 
liminary to  this  peaceful  occupation  of  the 
land  he  marched  up  the  Rock  River,  expect- 
ing to  be  joined  by  the  Winnebagoes  and 
Pottawatomies.  But  the  time  was  past  for 
honorable  alliances  among  the  Indians.  His 
oath-bound  confederates  gave  him  little  as- 
sistance, and  soon  cast  in  their  lot  with  the 
stronger  party. 
This  movement  excited  general  alarm  in 
the  State.  General  Atkinson,  commanding  the 
United  States  troops,  sent  a  formal  summons 
to  Black  Hawk  to  return;  but  the  old  chief 
was  already  well  on  his  way  to  the  lodge  of 
his  friend,  the  prophet  Wabokishick,  at  Proph-
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
etstown,  and  treated  the  summons  with 
contemptuous  defiance.  The  Governor  im- 
mediately called  for  volunteers,  and  was  him- 
self astonished  at  the  alacrity  with  which  the 
call  was  answered.  Among  those  who  enlisted 
at  the  first  tap  of  the  drum  was  Abraham  Lin- 
coln, and  equally  to  his  surprise  and  delight 
he  was  elected  captain  of  his  company.  The 
volunteer  organizations  of  those  days  were 
conducted  on  purely  democratic  principles. 
The  company  assembled  on  the  green,  an 
election  was  suggested,  and  three-fourths  of 
the  men  walked  over  to  where  Lincoln  was 
standing;  most  of  the  small  remainder  joined 
themselves  to  one  Kirkpatrick,  a  man  of 
some  substance  and  standing  from  Spring 
Creek.  We  have  the  word  of  Mr.  Lincoln  for 
it,  that  no  subsequent  success  ever  gave  him 
such  unmixed  pleasure  as  this  earliest  distinc- 
tion. It  was  a  sincere,  unsought  tribute  of  his 
equals  to  those  physical  and  moral  qualities 
which  made  him  the  best  man  of  his  hundred, 
and  as  such  was  accepted  and  prized. 
At  the  Beardstown  rendezvous,  Captain 
Lincoln's  company  was  attached  to  Colonel 
Samuel  Thompson's  regiment,  the  Fourth 
Illinois,  which  was  organized  at  Richland, 
Sangamon  County,  on  the  21st  of  April,  and 
moved  on  the  27th,  with  the  rest  of  the  com- 
mand under  General  Whiteside,  for  Yellow 
Banks,  where  the  boats  with  provisions  had 
been  ordered  to  meet  them.  It  was  arduous 
marching.  There  were  no  roads  and  no 
bridges,  and  the  day's  work  included  a  great 
deal  of  labor.  The  third  day  out  they  came 
to  the  Henderson  River,  a  stream  some  fifty 
yards  wide,  swift  and  swollen  with  the  spring 
thaws,  with  high  and  steep  banks.  To  most 
armies  this  would  have  seemed  a  serious  ob- 
stacle, but  these  backwoodsmen  swarmed  to 
the  work  like  beavers,  and  in  less  than  three 
hours*  the  river  was  crossed  with  the  loss  of 
only  one  or  two  horses  and  wagons.  When 
they  came  to  Yellow  Banks,  on  the  Missis- 
sippi, the  provision-boats  had  not  arrived,  and 
for  three  days  they  waited  there  literally  with- 
out food ;  very  uncomfortable  days  for  Gov- 
ernor Reynolds,  who  accompanied  the  expe- 
dition, and  was  forced  to  hear  the  outspoken 
comments  of  two  thousand  hungry  men  on 
his  supposed  inefficiency.  But  on  the  6th  of 
May  the  William  Wallace  arrived,  and  "this 
sight,"  says  the  Governor  with  characteristic 
sincerity,  "  was,  I  presume,  the  most  interest- 
ing I  ever  beheld."  From  there  they  marched 
to  the  mouth  of  Rock  River,  and  thence  Gen- 
eral Whiteside  proceeded  with  his  volunteers 
up  the  river  some  ninety  miles  to  Dixon, 
where  they  halted  to  await  the  arrival  of  Gen- 
eral Atkinson  with    the   regular   troops  and 
*  Reynolds's  "Life  and  Times,"  p.  356. 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 34. 
provisions.    There  they  found  two  battel 
of  fresh  horsemen,  under  Majors  Stillman  and 
Bailey,  who  had  as  yet  seen  no  service  and 
were  eager  for  the  fray.  Whiteside's  men 
were  tired  with  their  forced  march,  and  be- 
sides, in  their  ardor  to  get  forward,  they  had 
thrown  away  a  good  part  of  their  provisions 
and  left  their  baggage  behind.  It  pleased  the 
Governor,  therefore,  to  listen  to  the  prayers 
of  Stillman's  braves,  and  he  gave  them  orders 
to  "proceed  to  the  head  of  Old  Man's  Creek, 
where  it  was  supposed  there  were  some  hostile 
Indians,  and  coerce  them  into  submission." 
"  I  thought,"  says  the  Governor  in  his  mem- 
oirs, "  they  might  discover  the  enemy." 
The  supposition  was  certainly  well  founded. 
They  rode  merrily  away,  came  to  Old  Man's 
Creek,  thereafter  to  be  called  Stillman's  Run, 
and  encamped  for  the  night.  By  the  failing 
light  a  small  party  of  Indians  was  discovered 
on  the  summit  of  a  hill  a  mile  away,  and  a 
few  courageous  gentlemen  hurriedly  saddled 
their  horses,  and,  without  orders,  rode  after 
them.  The  Indians  retreated,  but  were  soon 
overtaken,  and  two  or  three  of  them  killed. 
The  volunteers  were  now  strung  along  a  half 
mile  of  hill  and  valley,  with  no  more  order  or 
care  than  if  they  had  been  chasing  rabbits. 
Black  Hawk,  who  had  been  at  supper  when 
the  running  fight  began,  hastily  gathered  a 
handful  of  warriors  and  attacked  the  scattered 
whites.  The  onset  of  the  savages  acted  like  an 
icy  bath  on  the  red-hot  valor  of  the  volunteers ; 
they  turned  and  ran  for  their  lives,  stampeding 
the  camp  as  they  fled.  There  was  very  little 
resistance  — so  little  that  Black  Hawk,  fearing 
a  ruse,  tried  to  recall  his  warriors  from  the  pur- 
suit, but  in  the  darkness  and  confusion  could 
not  enforce  his  orders.  The  Indians  killed  all 
they  caught  up  with  ;  but  the  volunteers  had 
the  fleeter  horses,  and  only  eleven  were  over- 
taken. The  rest  reached  Dixon  by  twos  and 
threes,  rested  all  night,  and  took  courage.  Gen- 
eral Whiteside  marched  out  to  the  scene  of 
the  disaster  the  next  morning,  but  the  Indians 
were  gone.  They  had  broken  up  into  small 
parties,  and  for  several  days  they  reaped  the 
bloody  fruit  of  their  victory  in  the  massacre  of 
the  peaceful  settlements  in  the  adjacent  dis- 
tricts. 
The  time  of  enlistment  of  the  volunteers 
had  now  come  to  an  end,  and  the  men,  seeing 
no  prospect  of  glory  or  profit,  and  wear}7  of 
the  work  and  the  hunger  which  were  the  only 
certain  incidents  of  the  campaign,  refused  in 
great  part  to  continue  in  service.  But  it  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  Captain  Lincoln 
was  not  one  of  these  homesick  soldiers.  Not 
even  the  trammels  of  rank,  which  are  usually 
so  strong  among  the  trailers  of  the  saber,  could 
restrain  him  from  what  he  considered  his  sim-
25« 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
^J^t 
<L/I&*-1*^<SL*s' 
I  CERTIFY,  That      ^£&s~^?  f//^     ^  ^™^^  volunteered  and  served 
&/  &t      /&?<  t^&^ZZ^  ,n  the  Company  of  Mounted  Volunteers  under  my 
command,  in  the  Regiment  commanded  by  Col.  Samuel  M.  Thompson,  in  the  Brigade  under  the  com- 
mand of  Generals  S.  Whiteside  and  H.  Atkinson,  called  into  the  service  of  the  United  States  by 
the  Commander-m-X^hief  of  the  Militia  of  the  State,  for  the  protection  of  the  North  "Western  Frontier 
against  an  Invasion  of  the  British  Band  of  "Sac  and  other  tribes  of  Indians, — that  he  was  enrolled  on  the 
J£,/     day  of    ^^J^U^cjC    1832,  and  was  HONORABLY  DISCHARGED  on  the 
y^  day  of       jrUst><JL, 
Given  under  my  hand,  this 
thereafter,  having  served 
yf<=^i/ 
&/' 
day  of 
^JL^&^^t 
&esis~ 
1332. 
a&Z^  '^ 
A     SOLDIER'S     DISCHARGE    FROM    THE    BLACK    HAWK    WAR,    SIGNED     BY    A.    LINCOLN,    CAPTAIN. 
(IN     POSSESSION     OF    O.    H.    OLDROYD,    ESQ.,    SPRINGFIELD,    ILLINOIS.) 
pie  duty.  As  soon  as  he  was  mustered  out  of 
his  captaincy,  he  reenlisted  on  the  same  day, 
May  27,  as  a  private  soldier.  Several  other  offi- 
cers did  the  same,  among  them  General  White- 
side and  Major  Stuart.  Lincoln  became  a 
member  of  Captain  Elijah  Ues's  company  of 
mounted  volunteers,  sometimes  called  the 
"Independent  Spy  Battalion,"  an  organization 
unique  of  its  kind,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  ac- 
count given  by  one  of  its  troopers.  It  was  not, 
says  Mr.  George  W.  Harrison,  "  under  the  con- 
trol of  any  regiment  or  brigade,  but  received 
orders  directly  from  the  Commander-in-Chief, 
and  always,  when  with  the  army,  camped 
within  the  lines,  and  had  many  other  privi- 
leges, such  as  having  no  camp  duties  to  per- 
form and  drawing  rations  as  much  and  as  often 
as  we  pleased,"  which  would  seem  to  liken  this 
battalion  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  fabled 
"  regiment  of  brigadiers."  With  this  elite  corps 
Lincoln  served  through  his  second  enlistment, 
though  it  was  not  his  fortune  to  take  part  in 
either  of  the  two  engagements  in  which  Gen- 
eral Henry  broke  and  destroyed  forever  the 
power  of  Black  Hawk  and  the  British  band  of 
Sacs  and  Foxes  at  the  Wisconsin  Bluffs  and 
the  Bad  Axe. 
After  Lincoln  was  relieved  of  the  weight 
of  dignity  involved  in  his  captaincy,  the  war 
became  a  sort  of  holiday,  and  the  tall  private 
from  New  Salem  enjoyed  it  as  much  as  any 
one.  He  entered  with  great  zest  into  the  ath- 
letic sports  with  which  soldiers  love  to  beguile 
the  tedium  of  camp.  He  was  admitted  to  be 
the  strongest  man  in  the  army,  and,  with  one 
exception,  the  best  wrestler.  Indeed  his  friends 
never  admitted  the  exception,  and  severely 
blamed  Lincoln  for  confessing  himself  defeated 
on  the  occasion  when  he  met  the  redoubtable 
Thompson,  and  the  two  fell  together  on  the 
turf.  His  popularity  increased  from  the  be- 
ginning to  the  end  of  the  campaign,  and  those 
of  his  comrades  who  still  survive  always  speak 
with  hearty  and  affectionate  praise  of  his 
character  and  conduct  in  those  rough  yet 
pleasantly  remembered  days. 
The  Spy  Battalion  formed  no  part  of  Gen- 
eral Henry's  forces  when,  by  a  disobedience 
of  orders  as  prudent  as  it  was  audacious,  he 
started  with  his  slender  force  on  the  fresh  trail 
which  he  was  sure  would  lead  him  to  Black 
Hawk's  camp.  He  found  and  struck  the  en- 
emy at  bay  on  the  bluffs  of  the  Wisconsin 
River  on  the  21st  of  July,  and  inflicted  upon 
them  a  signal  defeat.  The  broken  remnant  of 
Black  Hawk's  power  then  fled  for  the  Missis- 
sippi River,  the  whole  army  following  in  close 
pursuit  —  General  Atkinson  in  front  and  Gen- 
eral Henry  bringing  up  the  rear.  Fortune 
favored  the  latter  once  more,  for  while  Black 
Hawk  with  a  handful  of  men  was  engaging 
and  drawing  away  the  force  under  Atkinson, 
General  Henry  struck  the  main  trail,  and 
brought  on  the  battle  of  the  Bad  Axe,  if  that 
could  be  called  a  battle  which  was  an  easy 
slaughter  of  the  weary  and  discouraged  sav-