ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865)

Book: The Beginner's American History

Chapter: XXIX | Abraham Lincoln

Author: D. H. Montgomery

The tall man from Illinois making his first speech in Congress; how he wrote his name; what the people called him.

Not many days before gold was found at Sutter's saw-mill in California (1848), a tall, awkward-looking man from Illinois was making his first speech in Congress. At that time he generally wrote his name A. Lincoln, but after he had become President of the United States, he often wrote it out in full, Abraham Lincoln.

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The plain country people of Illinois, who knew all about him, liked best to call him by the title they had first given him,—"Honest Abe Lincoln," or, for short, "Honest Abe." Let us see how he got that name.

The Lincoln family move to Indiana; "Abe" helps his father build a new home; what it was like.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12th, 1809, in a log shanty on a lonely little farm in Kentucky*. When "Abe," as he was called, was seven years old, his father, Thomas Lincoln, moved, with his family, to Indiana*; there the boy and his mother worked in the woods and helped him build a new home. That new home was not so good or so comfortable as some of our cow-sheds are. It was simply a hut made of rough logs and limbs of trees. It had no door and no windows. One side of it was left entirely open; and if a roving Indian or a bear wanted to walk in to dinner, there was nothing whatever to stop him. In winter "Abe's" mother used to hang up some buffalo skins before this wide entrance, to keep out the cold, but in summer the skins were taken down, so that living in such a cabin was the next thing to living out-of-doors.

*Kentucky: Abraham Lincoln was born on the banks of the Big South Fork (or branch) of Nolin Creek in Hardin (now La Rue) County, Kentucky.

*Indiana: the Lincoln family moved to a farm on Little Pigeon Creek, near Gentryville, in what is now Spencer County, Indiana.

The new log cabin with four sides to it; how the furniture was made; "Abe's" bed in the loft.

The Lincoln family stayed in that shed for about a year; then they moved into a new log cabin which had four sides to it. They seem to have made a new set of furniture for the new house. "Abe's" father got a large log, split it in two, smoothed off the flat side, bored holes in the under side and drove in four stout sticks for legs: that made the table. They had no chairs,—it would have been too much trouble to make the backs,—but they had three-legged stools, which Thomas Lincoln made with an axe, just as he did the table; perhaps "Abe" helped him drive in the legs.

In one corner of the loft of this cabin the boy had a big bag of dry leaves for his bed. Whenever he felt like having a new bed, all that he had to do was to go out in the woods and gather more leaves.

He worked about the place during the day, helping his father and mother. For his supper he had a piece of cornbread. After he had eaten it, he climbed up to his loft in the dark, by a kind of ladder of wooden pins driven into the logs. Five minutes after that he was fast asleep on his bed of sweet-smelling leaves, and was dreaming of hunting coons, or of building big bonfires out of brush.

Death of "Abe's" mother; the lonely grave in the woods; what Abraham Lincoln said of his mother after he had grown to be a man; what "Abe's" new mother said of him.

"Abe's" mother was not strong, and before they had been in their new log cabin a year she fell sick and died. She was buried on the farm. "Abe" used to go out and sit by her lonely grave in the forest and cry. It was the first great sorrow that had ever touched the boy's heart. After he had grown to be a man, he said with eyes full of tears to a friend with whom he was talking: "God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

At the end of a year Thomas Lincoln married again. The new wife that he brought home was a kind-hearted and excellent woman. She did all she could to make the poor, ragged, barefooted boy happy. After he had grown up and become famous, she said: "Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused to do anything I asked him: Abe was the best boy I ever saw."

The school in the woods; the new teacher; reading by the open fire; how "Abe" used the fire-shovel.

There was a log schoolhouse in the woods quite a distance off, and there "Abe" went for a short time. At the school he learned to read and write a little, but after a while he found a new teacher, that was—himself. When the rest of the family had gone to bed, he would sit up and read his favorite books by the light of the great blazing logs heaped up on the open fire. He had not more than half a dozen books in all. They were "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," Æsop's* Fables, the Bible, a Life of Washington, and a small History of the United States. The boy read these books over and over till he knew a great deal of them by heart and could repeat whole pages from them.

Part of his evenings he spent in writing and ciphering. Thomas Lincoln was so poor that he could seldom afford to buy paper and pens for his son, so the boy had to get on without them. He used to take the back of the broad wooden fire-shovel to write on and a piece of charcoal for a pencil. When he had covered the shovel with words or with sums in arithmetic, he would shave it off clean and begin over again. If "Abe's" father complained that the shovel was getting thin, the boy would go out into the woods, cut down a tree, and make a new one; for as long as the woods lasted, fire-shovels and furniture were cheap.

*Æsop (E'sop): the name of a noted writer of fables. Here is one of Æsop's fables: An old frog thought that he could blow himself up to be as big as an ox. So he drew in his breath and puffed himself out prodigiously. "Am I big enough now?" he asked his son. "No," said his son; "you don't begin to be as big as an ox yet." Then he tried again, and swelled himself out still more. "How's that?" he asked. "Oh, it's no use trying," said his son, "you can't do it." "But I will," said the old frog. With that he drew in his breath with all his might and puffed himself up to such an enormous size that he suddenly burst.

What Lincoln could do at seventeen; what he was at nineteen; his strength.

By the time the lad was seventeen he could write a good hand, do hard examples in long division, and spell better than any one else in the county. Once in a while he wrote a little piece of his own about something which interested him; when the neighbors heard it read, they would say, "The world can't beat it."

At nineteen Abraham Lincoln had reached his full height. He stood nearly six feet four inches, barefooted. He was a kind of good-natured giant. No one in the neighborhood could strike an axe as deep into a tree as he could, and few, if any, were equal to him in strength. It takes a powerful man to put a barrel of flour into a wagon without help, and there is not one in a hundred who can lift a barrel of cider off the ground; but it is said that young Lincoln could stoop down, lift a barrel on to his knees, and drink from the bung-hole.

Young Lincoln makes a voyage to New Orleans; how he handled the robbers.

At this time a neighbor hired Abraham to go with his son to New Orleans. The two young men were to take a flat-boat loaded with corn and other produce down the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was called a voyage of about eighteen hundred miles, and it would take between three and four weeks.

Young Lincoln was greatly pleased with the thought of making such a trip. He had never been away any distance from home, and, as he told his father, he felt that he wanted to see something more of the world. His father made no objection, but, as he bade his son good by, he said, Take care that in trying to see the world you don't see the bottom of the Mississippi.

The two young men managed to get the boat through safely. But one night a gang of negroes came on board, intending to rob them of part of their cargo. Lincoln soon showed the robbers he could handle a club as vigorously as he could an axe, and the rascals, bruised and bleeding, were glad to get off with their lives.

The Lincolns move to Illinois; what Abraham did; hunting frolics; how Abraham chopped; how he bought his clothes.

Not long after young Lincoln's return, his father moved to Illinois*. It was a two weeks' journey through the woods with ox-teams. Abraham helped his father build a comfortable log cabin; then he and a man named John Hanks split walnut rails, and fenced in fifteen acres of land for a cornfield.

That part of the country had but few settlers, and it was still full of wild beasts. When the men got tired of work and wanted a frolic, they had a grand wolf-hunt. First, a tall pole was set up in a clearing*; next, the hunters in the woods formed a great circle of perhaps ten miles in extent. Then they began to move nearer and nearer together, beating the bushes and yelling with all their might. The frightened wolves, deer, and other wild creatures inside of the circle of hunters were driven to the pole in the clearing; there they were shot down in heaps.

Young Lincoln was not much of a hunter, but he always tried to do his part. Yet, after all, he liked the axe better than he did the rifle. He would start off before light in the morning and walk to his work in the woods, five or six miles away. There he would chop steadily all day. The neighbors knew, when they hired him, that he wouldn't sit down on the first log he came to and fall asleep. Once when he needed a new pair of trousers, he made a bargain for them with a Mrs. Nancy Miller. She agreed to make him a certain number of yards of tow cloth*, and dye it brown with walnut bark. For every yard she made, Lincoln bound himself to split four hundred good fence-rails for her. In this way he made his axe pay for all his clothes.

* Illinois: he moved to a farm on the North Fork (or branch) of the Sangamon River, Macon County, Illinois. Springfield, the capital of the state, is in the next county west.

*Clearing: an open space made in a forest.

*Tow cloth: a kind of coarse, cheap, but very strong cloth, made of flax or hemp.

Lincoln hires out to tend store; the gang of ruffians in New Salem; Jack Armstrong and "Tall Abe."

The year after young Lincoln came of age he hired out to tend a grocery and variety store in New Salem, Illinois*. There was a gang of young ruffians in that neighborhood who made it a point to pick a fight with every stranger. Sometimes they mauled him black and blue; sometimes they amused themselves with nailing him up in a hogshead and rolling him down a hill. The leader of this gang was a fellow named Jack Armstrong. He made up his mind that he would try his hand on "Tall Abe," as Lincoln was called. He attacked Lincoln, and he was so astonished at what happened to him that he never wanted to try it again. From that time Abraham Lincoln had no better friends than young Armstrong and the Armstrong family. Later on we shall see what he was able to do for them.

*New Salem is on the Sangamon River, in Menard County, about twenty miles northwest of Springfield, the capital of Illinois.

Lincoln's faithfulness in little things; the six cents; "Honest Abe."

In his work in the store Lincoln soon won everybody's respect and confidence. He was faithful in little things, and in that way he made himself able to deal with great ones.

Once a woman made a mistake in paying for something she had bought, and gave the young man six cents too much. He did not notice it at the time, but after his customer had gone he saw that she had overpaid him. That night, after the store was closed, Lincoln walked to the woman's house, some five or six miles out of the village, and paid her back the six cents. It was such things as this that first made the people give him the name of "Honest Abe."

The Black Hawk War; the Indian's handful of dry leaves; what Lincoln did in the war.

The next year Lincoln went to fight the Indians in what was called the Black Hawk War. The people in that part of the country had been expecting the war; for, some time before, an Indian had walked up to a settler's cabin and said, "Too much white man." He then threw a handful of dry leaves into the air, to show how he and his warriors were coming to scatter the white men. He never came, but a noted chief named Black Hawk, who had been a friend of Tecumseh's, made an attempt to drive out the settlers, and get back the lands which certain Indians had sold them.

Lincoln said that the only battles he fought in this war were with the mosquitoes. He never killed a single Indian, but he saved the life of one old savage. He seems to have felt just as well satisfied with himself for doing that as though he had shot him through the head.

Lincoln becomes postmaster and surveyor; how he studied law; what the people thought of him as a lawyer.

After Lincoln returned from the war he was made postmaster of New Salem. He also found time to do some surveying and to begin the study of law. On hot summer mornings he might be seen lying on his back, on the grass, under a big tree, reading a law-book; as the shade moved round, Lincoln would move with it, so that by sundown he had travelled nearly round the tree.

When he began to practise law, everybody who knew him had confidence in him. Other men might be admired because they were smart, but Lincoln was respected because he was honest. When he said a thing, people knew that it was because he believed it, and they knew, too, that he could not be hired to say what he did not believe. That gave him immense influence.

The Armstrong murder trial; how Lincoln saved young Armstrong from being hanged.

But Lincoln was as keen as he was truthful and honest. A man was killed in a fight near where Lincoln had lived, and one of Jack Armstrong's brothers was arrested for the murder. Everybody thought that he was guilty, and felt sure that he would be hanged. Lincoln made some inquiry about the case, and made up his mind that the prisoner did not kill the man.

Mrs. Armstrong was too poor to hire a lawyer to defend her son, but Lincoln wrote to her that he would gladly do it for nothing.

When the day of the trial came, the chief witness was sure that he saw young Armstrong strike the man dead. Lincoln questioned him closely. He asked him when it was that he saw the murder committed. The witness said that it was in the evening, at a certain hour, and that he saw it all clearly because there was a bright moon. Are you sure? asked Lincoln. Yes, replied the witness. Do you swear to it? I do, answered the witness. Then Lincoln took an almanac out of his pocket, turned to the day of the month on which the murder had been committed, and said to the court: The almanac shows that there was no moon shining at the time at which the witness says he saw the murder*. The jury was convinced that the witness had not spoken the truth; they declared the prisoner "Not guilty," and he was at once set free.

Lincoln was a man who always paid his debts. Mrs. Armstrong had been very kind to him when he was poor and friendless. Now he had paid that debt.

* The almanac usually gives the time when the moon rises; and so by looking at any particular day of the month, one can tell whether there was a moon on that evening.

Lincoln and the pig.

Some men have hearts big enough to be kind to their fellow-men when they are in trouble, but not to a dumb animal. Lincoln's heart was big enough for both.

One morning just after he had bought a new suit of clothes he started to drive to the court-house, a number of miles distant. On the way he saw a pig that was making desperate efforts to climb out of a deep mud-hole. The creature would get part way up the slippery bank, and then slide back again over his head in mire and water. Lincoln said to himself: I suppose that I ought to get out and help that pig; for if he's left there, he'll smother in the mud. Then he gave a look at his glossy new clothes. He felt that he really couldn't afford to spoil them for the sake of any pig, so he whipped up his horse and drove on. But the pig was in his mind, and he could think of nothing else. After he had gone about two miles, he said to himself, I've no right to leave that poor creature there to die in the mud, and what is more, I won't leave him. Turning his horse, he drove back to the spot. He got out and carried half a dozen fence-rails to the edge of the hole, and placed them so that he could get to it without falling in himself. Then, kneeling down, he bent over, seized the pig firmly by the fore legs and drew him up on to the solid ground, where he was safe. The pig grunted out his best thanks, and Lincoln, plastered with mud, but with a light heart, drove on to the court-house.

Lincoln is elected to the state legislature; he goes to Springfield to live; he is elected to Congress.

Many people in Illinois thought that they would like to see such a man in the state legislature helping to make their laws. They elected him; and as he was too poor at that time to pay so much horse-hire, he walked from New Salem, a distance of over a hundred miles, to Vandalia, which was then the capital of the state.

Lincoln was elected to the legislature many times; later, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and made that place his home for the rest of his life.

The next time the people elected him to office, they sent him to Congress to help make laws, not for his state only, but for the whole country. He had got a long way up since the time when he worked with John Hanks fencing the cornfield round his father's cabin; but he was going higher still,—he was going to the top.

The meeting for choosing a candidate for President of the United States; the two fence-rails; the Chicago meeting; Abraham Lincoln elected President of the United States.

In the spring of 1860 a great convention, or meeting, was held in one of the towns of Illinois. Lincoln was present at that convention. The object of the people who had gathered there was to choose a candidate* that they would like to see elected President of the United States. A number of speeches had been made, when a member of the convention rose and said that a person asked the privilege of making the meeting a present. It was voted to receive it. Then John Hanks and one of his neighbors brought in two old fence-rails and a banner with these words painted on it:—

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

THE RAIL CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY

IN 1860.

TWO RAILS FROM A LOT OF 3000

MADE IN 1830

BY JOHN HANKS AND ABE LINCOLN.

The rails were received with cheer after cheer, and Lincoln was chosen candidate. About a week after that a much greater meeting was held in Chicago, and he was chosen there in the same way. The next November Abraham Lincoln, "the Illinois rail-splitter," was elected President of the United States. He had reached the top. There he was to die.

*Candidate: a person who seeks some office, such as that of governor or president, or a person who is recommended by a party for such an office. The people in favor of the candidate vote for him; and if he gets a sufficient number of votes, he is elected.

The great war between the North and the South; why a large part of the people of the South wished to leave the Union.

In less than six weeks after Lincoln actually became President, in the spring of 1861, a terrible war broke out between the North and the South. The people of South Carolina fired the first gun in that war. They, together with a great part of the people of ten other southern states, resolved to leave the Union*. They set up an independent government called the Confederate States of America, and made Jefferson Davis its president.

The main reason why so many of the people of the South wished to withdraw from the United States was that little by little the North and the South had become like two different countries.

At the time of the Revolution, when we broke away from the rule of England, every one of the states held negro slaves; but in the course of eighty years a great change had taken place. The negroes at the North had become free, but those of the South still remained slaves. Now this difference in the way of doing work made it impossible for the North and the South to agree about many things.

They had come to be like two boys in a boat who want to go in opposite directions. One pulls one way with his oars, the other pulls another way, and so the boat does not get ahead.

At the South most of the people thought that slavery was right, and that it helped the whole country; at the North the greater part of the people were convinced that it was wrong, and that it did harm to the whole country.

But this was not all. The people who held slaves at the South wanted to add to the number. They hoped to get more of the new country west of the Mississippi River for slave states, so that there might always be at least as many slave states in the Union as there were free states. But Abraham Lincoln like most of the people at the North believed that slavery did no good to any one. He and his party were fully determined that no slaves whatever should be taken into the territories west of the Mississippi River, and that every new state which should be added should be entirely free.

For this reason it happened that when Lincoln became President most of the slave states resolved to leave the Union, and, if necessary, to make war rather than be compelled to stay in it.

In 1861 eleven of the southern states endeavored to withdraw from the Union; this attempt brought on the war.

*Union: several years after the close of the Revolutionary War, by which we gained our independence of Great Britain, the people of the thirteen states formed a new government. That new government bound all the states together more strongly than before, thus making, as was then said, "a more perfect union."

The North and the South in the war; President Lincoln frees the slaves; General Grant and General Lee; peace is made.

The North had the most men and the most money to fight with, but the people of the South had the advantage of being able to stay at home and fight on their own ground.

The war lasted four years (1861-1865). Many terrible battles were fought; thousands of brave men were killed on both sides. During the war President Lincoln gave the slaves their freedom in all the states which were fighting against the Union, and those in the other slave states got their freedom later. After a time General Grant obtained the command of all the armies of the North, and General Lee became the chief defender of the South.

The last battles were fought around Richmond, Virginia, between these two great generals. When the Southern soldiers saw that it was useless to attempt to fight longer, they laid down their arms, and peace was made—a peace honorable to both sides.

The success of the North preserves the Union and makes all slaves free; the North and the South shake hands; murder of President Lincoln.

The success of the North in the war preserved the Union, and as all negro laborers were now free, there was no longer any dispute about slavery. The North and the South could shake hands and be friends, for both were now ready to pull in the same direction.

The saddest thing at the close of the war was the murder of President Lincoln by a madman named Booth. Not only the people of the North but many of those at the South shed tears at his death, because they felt that they had an equal place in his great heart. He loved both, as a true American must ever love his whole country.

Summary

Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, became President of the United States in 1861. He was elected by a party in the North that was determined that slaves should not be taken into free states or territories, and that no more slave states should be made. On this account most of the slave-holding states of the South resolved to withdraw from the Union. A great war followed, and President Lincoln gave the slaves their freedom. The North succeeded in the war, and the Union was made stronger than ever, because the North and the South could no longer have any dispute over slavery. Both sides now shook hands and became friends.