The early life of Abraham Lincoln: / containing many unpublished documents and unpublished reminiscences of Lincoln's early friends

by Ida M. Tarbell

INFLUENCE OF THE RIVER LIFE.

In considering the different opportunities for development which the boy had at this time, his months spent on the Ohio as a ferryman and his trips down the Mississippi should not be forgotten. In fact, all that Abraham Lincoln saw of men and the world outside of Gentryville and its neighborhood, until after he was twenty-one years of age, he saw on these rivers. For many years the Ohio and the Mississippi were the Appian Way, the one route to the world for the Western settlers. To preserve it they had been willing in early times to go to war with Spain or with France, to secede from the Union, even to join Spain or France against the United States if either country would insure their right to their highway. In the long years in which the ownership of the great river was unsettled, every man of them had come to feel with Benjamin Franklin, “a neighbor might as well ask me to sell my street-door.” In fact, this water-way was their “street-door,” and all that many of them ever saw of the world passed here. Up and down the rivers was a continual movement. Odd craft of every kind possible on a river went by: “arks” and “sleds,” with tidy cabins where families lived, and where one could see the washing stretched, the children playing, the mother on pleasant days rocking and sewing; keel-boats, which dodged in and out and turned inquisitive noses up all the creeks and bayous; great fleets from the Alleghanies, made up of a score or more of timber rafts, and manned by forty or fifty rough boatmen; “Orleans boats,” loaded with flour, hogs, produce of all kinds; pirogues, made from great trees; “broad-horns;” curious nondescripts worked by a wheel; and, after 1812, steamboats.

FRAGMENT FROM A LEAF OF LINCOLN’S EXERCISE-BOOK.

SEE APPENDIX.

WILLIAM JONES.
The store in Gentryville in which Lincoln first made his reputation as a debater and story-teller was owned by Mr. Jones. The year before the Lincolns moved to Illinois Abraham clerked in the store, and it is said that when he left Indiana Mr. Jones sold him a pack of goods which he peddled on his journey. Mr. Jones was the representative from Spencer County in the State legislature from 1838 to 1841. He is no longer living. His son, Captain William Jones, is still in Gentryville.

All this traffic was leisurely. Men had time to tie up and tell the news and show their wares. Even the steamboats loitered as it pleased them. They knew no schedule. They stopped anywhere to let passengers off. They tied up wherever it was convenient, to wait for fresh wood to be cut and loaded, or for repairs to be made. Waiting for repairs seems, in fact, to have absorbed a great deal of the time of these early steamers. They were continually running on to “sawyers,” or “planters,” or “wooden islands,” and they blew up with a regularity which was monotonous. Even as late as 1842, when Charles Dickens made the trip down the Mississippi, he was often gravely recommended to keep as far aft as possible, “because the steamboats generally blew up forward.”

It was this varied river life with which Abraham Lincoln came into contact as a ferryman and boatman. Who can believe that he could see it and be part of it without learning much of the life and the world beyond him? Every time a steamboat or raft tied up near Anderson Creek and he with his companions boarded it and saw its mysteries and talked with its crew, every time he rowed out with passengers to a passing steamer, who can doubt that he came away with new ideas and fresh energy? The trips to New Orleans were, to a thoughtful boy, an education of no mean value. It was the most cosmopolitan and brilliant city of the United States at that date, and there young Lincoln saw life at its intensest.

CHAPTER V.
LINCOLN’S REPUTATION IN INDIANA.—REMINISCENCES OF HIS ASSOCIATES.

In spite of the crudeness of these early opportunities for learning; in spite of the fact that he had no wise direction, that he was brought up by a father with no settled purpose, and that he lived in a pioneer community, where a young man’s life at best is but a series of makeshifts, Lincoln soon developed a determination to make something out of himself, and a desire to know, which led him to neglect no opportunity to learn.

The only unbroken outside influence which directed and stimulated him in his ambitions was that coming first from his mother, then from his step-mother. These two women, both of them of unusual earnestness and sweetness of spirit, were one or the other of them at his side throughout his youth and young manhood. The ideal they held before him was the simple ideal of the early American, that if a boy is upright and industrious he may aspire to any place within the gift of the country. The boy’s nature told him they were right. Everything he read confirmed their teachings, and he cultivated, in every way open to him, his passion to know and to be something.

LINCOLN IN 1858.
From a photograph in the possession of Mr. Stuart Brown of Springfield, Illinois. The original of this photograph was bought in 1860, in a Springfield gallery, by Mr. D. McWilliams of Dwight, Illinois. Mr. McWilliams sent the picture to Mr. Milton Hay Jopingfield, an intimate friend of Mr. Lincoln’s, and from him received the following letter: “I am greatly pleased with this picture of Lincoln. I think it reproduces the man as he was, in the sober expression most habitual with him, better than any other photograph I have seen of him; and this is the opinion of all the old familiar acquaintances of his to whom I have shown it.”

There are many proofs that Lincoln’s characteristics were recognized at this period by his associates; that his determination to excel, if not appreciated, yet made its imprint. In 1865, thirty-five years after he left Gentryville, a biographer, anxious to save all that was known of Lincoln in Indiana, went among his old associates, and with a sincerity and thoroughness worthy of respect, interviewed them. At that time there were still living numbers of the people with whom Lincoln had been brought up. They all remembered something of him. It is curious to note that all of these people tell of his doing something different from what other boys did, something sufficiently superior to have made a keen impression upon them. In almost every case each person had his own special reason for admiring Lincoln. A facility in making rhymes and writing essays was the admiration of many, who considered it the more remarkable because “essays and poetry were not taught in school,” and “Abe took it up on his own account.”

GREEN B. TAYLOR, A BOYHOOD FRIEND OF LINCOLN.
Son of James Taylor, for whom Lincoln ran the ferry-boat at the mouth of Anderson Creek. Mr. Taylor, now in his eighty-second year, lives in South Dakota. He remembers Mr. Lincoln perfectly, and says that his father hired Abraham Lincoln for one year, at six dollars a month, and that he was “well pleased with the boy.”

Many others were struck by the clever use he made of his gift for writing. The wit he showed in taking revenge for a social slight by a satire on the Grigsbys, who had failed to invite him to a wedding, made a lasting impression in Gentryville. That he should write so well as to be able to humiliate his enemies more deeply than if he had resorted to the method of taking revenge current in the country, and thrashed them, seemed to his friends a mark of surprising superiority.

Others remembered his quick-wittedness in helping his friends.

“We are indebted to Kate Roby,” says Mr. Herndon, “for an incident which illustrates alike his proficiency in orthography and his natural inclination to help another out of the mire. The word ‘defied’ had been given out by Schoolmaster Crawford, but had been misspelled several times when it came Miss Roby’s turn. ‘Abe stood on the opposite side of the room,’ related Miss Roby to me in 1865, ‘and was watching me. I began d-e-f—, and then I stopped, hesitating whether to proceed with an i or a y. Looking up, I beheld Abe, a grin covering his face, and pointing with his index finger to his eye. I took the hint, spelled the word with an i, and it went through all right.’”

This same Miss Roby it was who said of Lincoln, “He was better read then than the world knows or is likely to know exactly.... He often and often commented or talked to me about what he had read—seemed to read it out of the book as he went along—did so to others. He was the learned boy among us unlearned folks. He took great pains to explain; could do it so simply. He was diffident then, too.”

CABINET MADE BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
This cabinet is now in the possession of Captain J. W. Wartmann of Evansville, Indiana. It is of walnut, two feet in height, and very well put together. Thomas Lincoln is said to have aided his son in making it.

One man was impressed by the character of the sentences he had given him for a copy. “It was considered at that time,” said he, “that Abe was the best penman in the neighborhood. One day, while he was on a visit at my mother’s, I asked him to write some copies for me. He very willingly consented. He wrote several of them, but one of them I have never forgotten, although a boy at that time. It was this:

“‘Good boys who to their books apply

Will all be great men by and by.’”

All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clearness in argument. “When he appeared in company,” says Nat Grigsby, “the boys would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was figurative in his speech, talks, and conversation. He argued much from analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories, maxims, tales, and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and near us, that we might instantly see the force and bearing of what he said.”

PIGEON CREEK CHURCH, WHICH THE LINCOLNS ATTENDED IN INDIANA.
From a photograph loaned by W. W. Admire of Chicago. This little log church, or “meetin’ house,” is where the Lincolns attended services in Indiana. The pulpit is said to have been made by Thomas Lincoln. The building was razed about fifteen years ago, after having been used for several years as a tobacco barn.

There are many proofs that he was an authority on all subjects, even the country jockeys bringing him their stories and seeking to inspire his enthusiasm. Captain John Lamar of Gentryville, who was a very small boy in the neighborhood when Lincoln was a young man, is still fond of describing a scene he witnessed once, which shows with what care even the “heroes” of the country tried to impress young Lincoln. “Uncle Jimmy Larkins, as everybody called him,” says Mr. Lamar, “was a great hero in my childish eyes. Why, I cannot now say, without it was his manners. There had been a big fox-chase, and Uncle Jimmy was telling about it. Of course he was the hero. I was only a little shaver, and I stood in front of Uncle Jimmy, looking up into his eyes; but he never noticed me. He looked at Abraham Lincoln, and said: ‘Abe, I’ve got the best horse in the world; he won the race and never drew a long breath.’ But Abe paid no attention to Uncle Jimmy, and I got mad at the big, overgrown fellow, and wanted him to listen to my hero’s story. Uncle Jimmy was determined that Abe should hear, and repeated the story. ‘I say, Abe, I have the best horse in the world; after all that running he never drew a long breath.’ Then Abe, looking down at my little dancing hero, said: ‘Well, Larkins, why don’t you tell us how many short breaths he drew?’ This raised a laugh on Uncle Jimmy, and he got mad, and declared he’d fight Abe if he wasn’t so big. He jumped around until Abe quietly said: ‘Now, Larkins, if you don’t shut up I’ll throw you in that water.’ I was very uneasy and angry at the way my hero was treated, but I lived to change my views about heroes.”

THE FIRST LINCOLN MONUMENT.
From a photograph made for this work. When Abraham Lincoln left Indiana, in 1830, his friend James Gentry planted, in remembrance of him, near the Lincoln cabin, a cedar tree. It still stands, sturdy and strong, though it is stripped of twigs as high as one can reach. Those who point out the tree explain the bareness by saying: “The folks who come lookin’ around have taken twigs until you can’t reach any more very handy.”

There is one other testimony to his character as a boy which should not be omitted. It is that of his step-mother:

“Abe was a good boy, and I can say what scarcely one woman—a mother—can say in a thousand: Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life.... His mind and mine—what little I had—seemed to run together. He was here after he was elected President. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he loved me truly. 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.”

OLD POST FORD ACROSS THE WABASH RIVER, WHERE THE LINCOLNS CROSSED FROM INDIANA TO ILLINOIS.
From a photograph made for this work. The route by which the Lincolns went into Illinois from Indiana has always been a question in dispute. Some of the acquaintances of the family still living in Indiana claim that they followed the line marked on our map (page [45]). Others say that they went from Gentryville to the Old Post Ford across the Wabash. The route on the map was drawn on the supposition that they would have taken the road by which they would have avoided the greatest number of watercourses. Information has come to us since the map was made which shows that they went by Vincennes. Mr. Jesse W. Weik says that Dennis Hanks, who was in the party, told him in 1886 that they went through Vincennes. Colonel Chapman of Charleston, the grandson of Sarah Bush Lincoln, told Mr. Weik that in February, 1861, when Mr. Lincoln visited his mother for the last time, he told him that the settlers passed through Vincennes, where they remained a day. There, Lincoln said, they saw a printing-press for the first time. At Palestine, on the Illinois side of the Wabash, he remembered seeing a large crowd around the United States Land Office, and a travelling juggler performing sleight-of-hand tricks. We also know that they entered Decatur from the south, near the present line of the Illinois Central. This Mr. Lincoln told Mr. H. C. Whitney.

CHAPTER VI.
AMUSEMENTS OF LINCOLN’S LIFE IN INDIANA.—HIS FIRST SORROWS.

If Abraham Lincoln’s early struggle for both livelihood and education was rough and hard, his life was not without amusements. At home the rude household was overflowing with life. There were Abraham and his sister, a step-brother and two step-sisters, and a cousin of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, whom misfortune had made an inmate of the Lincoln home—quite enough to plan sports and mischief and keep time from growing dull. Thomas Lincoln and Dennis Hanks were both famous story-tellers, and the Lincolns spent many a cozy evening about their cabin fire, repeating the stories they knew.

GRAVE OF LINCOLN’S SISTER.
From a photograph taken for this work. Sarah, or Nancy, Lincoln was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in 1807. In 1826 she married Aaron Grigsby, and a year later died. She was buried not far from Gentryville, in what is now called “Old Pigeon Cemetery.” Her grave is marked by the rude stone directly over the star. The marble monument in the centre is that of her husband.

CORN-HUSK BROOMS AND MOPS.
Photographed for this work from the originals, in the United States National Museum at Washington. Corn-husks were used by the pioneers of the West to make brooms, brushes, mats, and horse-collars.

Of course the boys hunted. Not that Abraham ever became a true sportsman; indeed, he seems to have lacked the genuine sporting instinct. In a curious autobiography, written entirely in the third person, which Mr. Lincoln prepared at the request of a friend in 1860,[^[9]] he says of his exploits as a hunter: “A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin; and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on any larger game.” This exploit is confirmed by Dennis Hanks, who says: “No doubt about A. Lincoln’s killing the turkey. He done it with his father’s rifle, made by William Lutes of Bullitt County, Kentucky. I have killed a hundred deer with her myself; turkeys too numerous to mention.”

A LINCOLN CHAIR.
This chair was made from rails split by Abraham Lincoln when he was living in Spencer County, Indiana.

But there were many other country sports which he enjoyed to the full. He went swimming in the evenings; fished with the other boys in Pigeon Creek, and caught chubs and suckers enough to delight any boy; he wrestled, jumped, and ran races at the noon rests. He was present at every country horse-race and fox-chase. The sports he preferred were those which brought men together: the spelling-school, the husking-bee, the “raising;” and of all these he was the life by his wit, his stories, his good nature, his doggerel verses, his practical jokes, and by a rough kind of politeness—for even in Indiana in those times there was a notion of politeness, and one of Lincoln’s schoolmasters had even given “lessons in manners.” Lincoln seems to have profited in a degree by them; for Mrs. Crawford, at whose home he worked some time, declares that he always “lifted his hat and bowed” when he made his appearance.

PIONEER KITCHEN UTENSILS.
Drawn for this work from the original articles, in the United States National Museum, through the courtesy of the director, Mr. G. Brown Goode. The articles in the group are a hominy mortar and pestle, water gourd and gourd dipper, wooden pails and tub, and a wooden piggin.

There was, of course, a rough gallantry among the young people; and Lincoln’s old comrades and friends in Indiana have left many tales of how he “went to see the girls,” of how he brought in the biggest back-log and made the brightest fire; then of how the young people, sitting around it, watching the way the sparks flew, told their fortunes. He helped pare apples, shell corn, and crack nuts. He took the girls to meeting and to spelling-school, though he was not often allowed to take part in the spelling-match, for the one who “chose first” always chose “Abe Lincoln,” and that was equivalent to winning, as the others knew that “he would stand up the longest.”

The nearest approach to sentiment at this time, of which we know, is recorded in a story Lincoln once told to an acquaintance in Springfield. It was a rainy day, and he was sitting with his feet on the window-sill, his eyes on the street, watching the rain. Suddenly he looked up and said:

THE HILL NEAR GENTRYVILLE FROM WHICH THE LINCOLNS TOOK THEIR LAST LOOK AT THEIR INDIANA HOME.

“Did you ever write out a story in your mind? I did when I was a little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first I ever had heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a great deal, and one day when I was sitting out in the sun by the house 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, and we went in. The next night we tried again, and the same thing happened—the horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded that we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father to give her to me. I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once; but I concluded it was not much of a story. But I think that was the beginning of love with me.”[^[10]]

LINCOLN’S FIRST HOME IN ILLINOIS.
After a photograph owned by H. E. Barker of Springfield, Illinois. A printed description accompanying the photograph says: “The above is an exact reproduction of a photograph taken in 1865 of Abraham Lincoln’s cabin on the banks of the Sangamon River. The cabin was located upon Section 28, Harristown Township, Macon County, Illinois.” The genuineness of the picture is attested by the Hon. Richard J. Oglesby, at that time Governor of Illinois.