Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-04-13

T was, however, from his mother that Lin
coin got the finer gray matter Of his brain
and that temperament which was SO powerful
an ally of his benefcent mentality. Nancy
Hanks came of a West Briton stock-the old
Cymruan Celt, transferred therefrom to Ire
land and touched to quickening spirit by
Milesian activity. The Dublin Hanks, a
famous Quaker family of the English roll,
claim very direct collateral connection with
the American Hanks, of which Nancy was one
OF the insignificant members when living.
General Hanks, one Of Cromwelrs commanders
in the subjugation of Ireland, was of the same
stock.
But that was a wonderful period in which
Abraham Lincoln was made. Born in 1903, the
Kentucky boy became a man conscious of
power just as the political influences of the
slave system began to assert themselves. What
was learned was thoroughly and it whetted
their appetites for more. It was not really till
after 1870 that there came into being those
combinations on both sides Of the Ohio which
led SO steadily up to Civil War secession.
In 1880 Abraham Lincoln was q, fully able to
take his place on the one side or the other. He
was Of the non-slaveholding class, of those who
but few years later and on until the war
ended, were known as ''poor, white trash"
All along the eastern foothills and bench of
the Appalachians, from the Potomac to Geor-
gia descendants of the men who followed
Marion and Sumpter, were forced back to the
harsher hill farms or out of the region into the
Ohio Valley, by the growth of the plantations
and the profits created by the cotton-gin, slave
hated slavery; generally, too, they hated the
"nigger." Abraham was too philosophically
broad.minded to hate but he stood strongly on
the side of free labor. The central and southern
counties of Illinois and Indiana were full of the
class of which he came, and of whom and be-
yond he has been the noblest representative.
Bright Men of the Time.
WHAT galaxy of young fellows they were
in Sangamon county in Lincoln's young
manhood. Henden and Shield-one cold and
the other hot, forid, not to say fiurried. David
Davis prudent and careful beyond bls years, a
Judge even in his earliest pressing. John Cal
hOun, one of LincoIn's earliest friends, is an
other of the forgotten ones. Yet he once filled
a somewhat memorable niche in rather in
Calhoun was Buchanan's Surveyor General in
the Territory of Kansas, and was the leader of
the Constitutional Convention whose abortive
piece of work was one of the serious misfor-
tunes of the Democratic party in the decade
preceding the civil war.
Mr. Calhoun was ABE" Lincon's chief when
the latter was a Deputy County Surveyor.
Colonel Baker, of Oregon and "Dick" Yates,
afterward Governor and United States Senator
from 1llinois-the executive who commissioned
Grant as a Colonel. Mr.. Lincoln himself used
to tell story of Colonel Baker which always
made considerable laughter at that gentleman.
He was of English birth, and as a boy as'well as
a man he was very handsome. Lincoln was a
little older, and Baker went home half dis
posed to cry one evening. On being asked what
was the matter, he sobbed out that it a
shame he had been born in England and would
never be President while ugly Abe" was sure
to be. Even then the quaint and able young
lawyer impressed everyone with his power.