Abraham Lincoln (Early APRP)

## The Life of Abraham Lincoln

### Early Life of Lincoln

Born to in a log cabin in Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky, he was the second child to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was raised in frontier America, his family moved to Spencer County in Indiana spending his days educating himself in literature and mathematics, this is how Lincoln would spend his free time once his drunken father, an abusive one at that, was done working Abraham like a horse as he put it. Thomas Lincoln bought or leased farms in Kentucky before losing all but 200 acres of his land in court disputes over property titles. In 1816, the family moved to Indiana where the land surveys and titles were more reliable. Indiana was a "free" (non-slaveholding) territory, and they settled in an "unbroken forest" in Hurricane Township, Perry County, Indiana. In 1845, Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery", but mainly due to land title difficulties.

#### Mother's Death

On October 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln succumbed to milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of a household including her father, 9-year-old Abraham, and Nancy's 19-year-old orphan cousin, Dennis Hanks. Ten years later, on January 20, 1828, Sarah died while giving birth to a stillborn son, devastating Lincoln.

On December 2, 1819, Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, with three children of her own. Abraham became close to his stepmother and called her "Mother". Lincoln disliked the hard labor associated with farm life. His family even said he was lazy, for all his "reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing Poetry, etc". His stepmother acknowledged he did not enjoy "physical labor", but loved to read.

##### Education and move to Illinois

Lincoln was largely self-educated. His formal schooling was from itinerant teachers. It included two short stints in Kentucky, where he learned to read but probably not to write, at age seven, and in Indiana, where he went to school sporadically due to farm chores, for a total of less than 12 months in aggregate by the age of 15. He persisted as an avid reader and retained a lifelong interest in learning. Family, neighbors, and schoolmates recalled that his reading included the King James Bible, Aesop's Fables, John Bunyan's *The Pilgrim's Progress*, Daniel Defoe's *Robinson Crusoe*, and *The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin*.

As a teen, Lincoln took responsibility for chores and customarily gave his father all earnings from work outside the home until he was 21. Lincoln was tall, strong, and athletic, and became adept at using an ax. He was an active wrestler during his youth and trained in the rough catch-as-catch-can style (also known as catch wrestling). He became county wrestling champion at the age of 21. He gained a reputation for strength and audacity after winning a wrestling match with the renowned leader of ruffians known as "the Clary's Grove Boys".

In March 1830, fearing another milk sickness outbreak, several members of the extended Lincoln family, including Abraham, moved west to Illinois, a free state, and settled in Macon County. Abraham then became increasingly distant from Thomas, in part due to his father's lack of education. In 1831, as Thomas and other family prepared to move to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, Abraham struck out on his own. He made his home in New Salem, Illinois, for six years. Lincoln and some friends took goods by flatboat to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was first exposed to slavery.

In 1847, Lincoln was asked how he came to acquire his rhetorical skills. He answered that in the practice of law he frequently came across the word "demonstrate" but had insufficient understanding of the term. So, he left Springfield for his father's home to study until he "could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid [here, referencing Euclid's *Elements*] at sight."

###### Early career and militia service

In 1832, Lincoln joined with a partner, Denton Offutt, in the purchase of a general store on credit in New Salem. Although the economy was booming, the business struggled and Lincoln eventually sold his share. That March he entered politics, running for the Illinois General Assembly, advocating navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. He could draw crowds as a raconteur, but he lacked the requisite formal education, powerful friends, and money, and lost the election.

Lincoln briefly interrupted his campaign to serve as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War. In his first campaign speech after returning, he observed a supporter in the crowd under attack, grabbed the assailant by his "neck and the seat of his trousers", and tossed him. Lincoln finished eighth out of 13 candidates (the top four were elected), though he received 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct.

Lincoln served as New Salem's postmaster and later as county surveyor, but continued his voracious reading, and decided to become a lawyer. Rather than studying in the office of an established attorney, as was the custom, Lincoln borrowed legal texts from attorneys John Todd Stuart and Thomas Drummond, purchased books including Blackstone's *Commentaries* and Chitty's *Pleadings*, and read law on his own. He later said of his legal education that "I studied with nobody."

Lincoln's second state house campaign in 1834, this time as a Whig, was a success over a powerful Whig opponent. Then followed his four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives for Sangamon County. He championed construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and later was a Canal Commissioner. He voted to expand suffrage beyond white landowners to all white males, but adopted a "free soil" stance opposing both slavery and abolition. In 1837 he declared, "[The] Institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils." He echoed Henry Clay's support for the American Colonization Society which advocated a program of abolition in conjunction with settling freed slaves in Liberia.

Admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836, he moved to Springfield and began to practice law under John T. Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin. Lincoln emerged as a formidable trial combatant during cross-examinations and closing arguments. He partnered several years with Stephen T. Logan, and in 1844 began his practice with William Herndon, "a studious young man".

Lincoln also served many years as a lawyer and was nicknamed the "Prairie Lawyer".

### Time in the Polk Presidency

After President James K. Polk was elected he had to decide on key members of his cabinet/advisory, when discussing with members of his administration on selecting a Attorney General and hearing of the Prairie Lawyer when mentioned, Polk after many discussions and interviews with other Attorney General candidates, chose Abraham Lincoln to become the 18th Attorney General of the United States. In the heat of tensions right before the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, Attorney General Lincoln argued against Mexican claims of America illegally annexing California and bringing them into the fold of the United States.

#### Time in the Monkey Presidency

After the death of President Polk, Vice-President Herr Monkey became the 13th President of the United States when deciding on the new Vice-President, Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt was selected after talking with Roosevelt, two other potential candidates for the Vice-Presidency was James Roosevelt I and Abraham Lincoln. After Theodore Roosevelt became Vice-President, President Monkey gave Lincoln the position of Secretary of War. At this time Lincoln started a mass recruitment campaign, expanding the navy, and sent the Perry Expedition, a voyage to Japan to end their 220 year old isolation policy to trade with the United States, by the use of gunboat diplomacy if necessary.