Abraham Lincoln

which an attempt is made to portray the character of Abraham Lincoln as

as to his purposes; and no difference of opinion as to his unselfish patriotism or the success of his administration of the government in the most trying period of its existence. Perhaps there is no other man of prominence in American history, or in the history of the human family, who

n unknown man. He had occupied no important position; he had rendered no great public service; his reputation was that of a debater and politician, and did not become national until he delivered a remarkable speech at Cooper Union, New York. His election was not due to personal popularity, nor to the strength of the party he represented, nor to the just

e vast armies, undertook the direction of military campaigns and of a momentous civil war, and conducted the diplomatic relations of a nation with skill and statesmanship that astonished his ministers and his generals. He, an humble country lawyer and local politician, suddenly took his place with the world's greatest statesmen, planned and managed the legislation of Congress, proposed financial measures that involved the we

material is often spoiled in the making; but only when the pure metal has passed through the fire and the forge is it fit to sustain a severe strain. Thus Abra

over on the same ship and are supposed to have been related. An army of their descendants is scattered over the Union. One of them, Samuel Lincoln, left a large family which has produced several prominent figures besides a President of the United States. One of his grandsons in the thir

and had a son named John, who took up a tract of land in Virginia about the year 1760, where, like the rest of his name, he raised a large family. John Linco

nt intermarriages between the Boones and the Lincolns they were closely allied. By the will of Mordecai Lincoln, II, his "loving friend and neighbor George Boone" was made executor of his estate and Squire Boone, father of the c

lf for courage and brutality on the Confederate side during the Civil War. He killed a Dunkard preacher whom he suspected of furnishing information to t

cked his wife and five children into a Conestoga wagon, and followed the great migration until it led him to what is now Hughes Station, Jefferson County, Kentucky, where he entered a large tract of land and paid for it one hundred and sixty pounds "in current money." The original warrant, dated March 4

st son, started to the house for his rifle; Josiah ran to the neighbors for assistance, leaving Thomas, a child of six, alone with his father. After Mordecai had recovered his rifle he saw an Indian in war-paint appear upon the scene, examine the dead body of his father, and stoop to raise the lad from the gr

ars to have inherited his father's money, as the rules of primogeniture prevailed in those days. He was sheriff of Washington County, a member of the Kentucky Legislature, and tradition gives him the reputation of an honorable and influential citizen. Late in life he removed to Hancock County, Illinois, where he died and is b

who was left uneducated and supported himself by farm work and other menial employment, and learned the trades of carpenter and cabinet-maker. But he must have had good stuff in him, for when he was twenty-five years old he had saved enough from his wages to buy a farm in Hardin County. L

use of Richard Berry, with whom she lived, and must have seen a good deal of her at the home of her uncle. At all events, the cousins became engaged; their nuptial bond was sig

In 1793 he died, leaving eight children, who were scattered among their relatives, and Nancy, the youngest, when nine years old, found a home with her aunt, Lucy Shipley, the wife of Richard Berry. She is represented to have been a sweet-tempered and handsome woman, of intellect, appearance, and character superior to her position; and could

more congenial for her than his lonely farm in Hardin County, which was fourteen miles away; and perhaps he thought that he coul

his farm near Hodgensville, on the Big South Fork of Nolen Creek. It was a miserable place, of thin, unproductive soil and only partly cleared. Its only attraction was a fine spring of water

his childhood. It was a far reach to the White House. Soon after his nomination for the Presidency he f

Larue, a mile or a mile and a half from where Hodgen's mill now is. My parents being dead, and my

Linc

14,

learly identified, and the cabin

omas Lincoln bought a better farm of two hundred and thirty-eight acres for one hundred and eighteen pound

n to his most intimate friends, although from remarks which he dropped from time to time they judged that the impressions of his first years were indelible upon his temperament and contributed to his melancholy. On one occasion, being asked if

0, by McClure,

ACE OF ABRA

the age of fourteen married Aaron Griggsby and died in childbirth a

his temperament, he thought he could do better in a new place; like other rolling stones, that he could gather more moss in a new soil. He found a purchaser for his farm who gave him in payment twenty dollars in money and ten barrels of whiskey, which Thomas Lincoln loaded upon a flat-boat, with his household furniture, floating it down Knob Creek to Rolling Fork, to Salt River, to the Ohio River, and down the Ohio to Thompson's Ferry in Perry County, Indiana. The boat upset o

g the following summer, which, with corn meal ground at a hand grist-mill seven miles away, were their chief food. Game, however, was abundant. The streams were full of fish and wild fruits could be gathered in the forest. The future President of the United States slept upon a heap of dry leaves in a narrow loft at one end of the cabin, to which he climbed by means of pegs driven into the wall. A year

s at her burial, but several months later Abraham, then ten years old, wrote to Parson David Elkin, the itinerant Free-will Baptist preacher at Hodgensville, of his mother's death, and begged him to come to Indiana and preach her funeral sermon. Nancy Lincoln must have been highly esteemed or this poor parson would not have c

0, by McClure,

From a photograph taken in September, 1895. The cabin in wh

of uncommon energy and nobility of character, and in after-life her step-son paid her a worthy tribute when he said that the strongest influence which stimulated and guided him in his ambition came from her and from his own mother. Under her management conditions improved. She brought a little property and some household goods into the family as well as three children, stimulated her husband to industry, and taught

; hired out upon the neighboring farms when there was nothing for him to do at home, and his wages (twenty-five cents a day) were paid to his father. He cared little for amusement, and hunting, which w

sition made him a great favorite. He was the best talker and story-teller in the neighborhood. His tall stature and unusual strength made him a leader in athletic sports, and his studious habits and retentive memory gave him an advantage among his comrades, a few of whom had a little, but the most of them no education. His less gifted comrades recognized his ability and

, and it was then that he earned the first money that he could claim as his own. One evening in the White House, while he wa

ats singled out mine, and asked: 'Who owns this?' I answered, somewhat modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks out to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was glad to have the chan

threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. Gentlemen, you may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me a trifle; but it was the most important incident in my

Allen upon a flat-boat to New Orleans with a load of bacon, corn meal, and other provisions, paying him eight dollars a month and his passage home on a steamboat. Thus the future President obtained his firs

ure of part of the 'cargo load,' as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar-coast, and one night they were attacked by seven negroes

tless disposition of Thomas Lincoln could not be restrained; so he and several of his relatives

s drawn by ox-teams, and Abraham drove one of the teams. They reached the county of Macon, and stopped there some time within the same month of March. His father and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the ti

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THE FARM WHERE

aph taken in S

May 9, 1860, bearing two weather-worn fence-rails decorated with streamers and a banner inscribed to the effect that they were from the identical lot of three thousand rails which Lincoln had cut on the Sangamon River in 1830. This dramatic scene was devised by Richard J. Oglesby, afterwards Governor and United States Senator, and one of Lincoln's most arde

nner that an old citizen of Macon County had something to present to the Convention. Then, with great dramatic effect, John Hanks entered, bearing the relics which were to bec

ngamon bottom. I don't know whether we made those rails or not; fact is, I don't think they are a credit to the maker [and his awk

y tapers by enthusiastic ladies, they were the subject of much private and newspaper attention. Later in the campaign they were sent from place to place in t

ter than in his intellectual attainments. For a man of his natural modesty he was very vain of his stature and strength, and was accustomed to display and boast of them even after he became President. He retained his muscular strength to the end of his life, although he then took very little physical exercise. The muscles of his body were like iron. General Veile says that he could take a heavy axe and, grasping it with his thumb and forefinger at the extreme end of the handle, hold it out on a horizontal line from his body. "When I was eighteen years of age I could do this," he said with pride, "and I have never seen the day since when I could not do it." The attachés of the office of the Secretary of War relate curious stories of his frequent displays of

, how tall

et and looked around at hi

you," continued the Presid

" responded the divine

r. Lincoln with a satisfied air, and proce

sent says that the latter showed more irritation than he had ever seen him exhibit before; nor did he forget it, but the next time his friend called he r

ented one after another to their candidate, and, as Governor E. D. Morgan, of New York, reached him, he ask

eavier, but I

him more than anything else on the grounds. Lincoln insisted upon testing the weights he handled, and was quite chagrine

ut I could lick salt o

nd signing larger mortgages. Finally, when he had reached the end of his credit, Lincoln bought him a tract of forty acres near Farmington, Coles County, where he lived until January 17, 1851, long enough to enjoy the satisfaction of seeing his son one of the foremost men in the State. He was buried near the little hamlet. His wife survived both him and her famous step-son, and was tenderly cared for as long as the latter live

and step-father most of his life, but never contributed much to their support, and was always in debt, although Lincoln several times give him me

o Missouri, where he thought he could do better than in Illinois, and asked permissio

dred dollars away with you, and leave her two hundred dollars at eight per cent, making her the eno

ln should lend him eighty dollars

somebody who will give you money for it.... I now promise you, that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar.... In this I do not mean that you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines in California

e Johnston again in regard to h

if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do you 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 up

e boat, and at the very beginning of the voyage it stuck midway across a dam at the village of New Salem. The bow was high in the air, the stern was low in the water, and shipwreck seemed absolutely certain when Lincoln's ingenuity rescued the craft. Having unloaded the cargo, he bored a hole in the bottom at the end extending over the dam; then he tilted up the boat and let the water run out. That being done, the boat was easily shoved over the

ons he received were retained throughout his entire career. He returned to St. Louis by steamer, walked across the country to New Salem, and became a clerk in the

igations which, in humorous satire upon his own folly, he called "the national debt." His creditors accepted his notes in settlement, and during the

except by labor, and to earn by labor eleven hundred dollars besides my living seemed the work of a lifetime. There was, however, but one way. I w

y a single creditor refused to accept his promises. A man named Van Bergen, who bought one of his notes on speculation, brought suit, obtained judgment against

bought in the horse and surveying instruments for one hundred and twenty dollars, and turned them over to their former owner. After Lincoln left New Salem James Short removed to th

of another man that gave Lincoln the sobriquet of "Honest Old Abe," which one of his biographers has

old until it was discontinued in May, 1836. His duties as postmaster, as well as his compensation, were very light, because there were only two or three hundred

ed a license to sell liquors, which was the practice of all country storekeepers in those days; but, as a matter of fact, the f

en he was a "flourishing grocery-keeper" at New Salem. Lincoln retorted that he had never been a "flourishing" grocery-k

e. John Calhoun, the County Surveyor, from whom he received an appointment as deputy, was a man of education an

after he began speaking I became very much interested in him. He made a very sensible speech. His manner was very much the same as in after-life; that is, the same peculiar characteristics were apparent then, thoug

veral love-affairs which caused him quite as much anxiety and anguish as happiness. The scene of his first

I wrote out a story in my mind. I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me. I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse, and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was the one we had left a few hours before

er faithfulness. It is needless to say that the young girl, being exceptionally pretty, had another lover. Taking advantage of the absence of the favored lover, the discarded one renewed his suit with great vehemence, and rumors reached the young man at the front that his love had gone over to his enemy, and that he was in danger of losing her entire

will wish I had withheld the pardon. We can't tell, though. I supp

gular boarder. He came of a distinguished family and was especially proud of the fact that his grandfather was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Before Lincoln met his daughter she had become engaged to John McNeill, alias McNamara, one of the wealthiest and most prosperous of the young me

suit; but, convinced that her former lover was either dead or had deserted her, she finally yielded and promised to become Lincoln's wife. As she desired to complete her education, she went to Jacksonville to spend the winter in an academy while he went to Springfield to attend the session of the Legislature and continue his law studies, it being agreed that in the spring, when he had been admitted to the bar, they should be married; but in the mean time the girl fell ill and died. The

art in the social affairs of the State capital. Although careless of forms and indifferent to the conventionalities of the day, he was recognized as a rising man, and his humor and conversational powers made him a great f

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O A SPRINGFIELD

ission, from th