That he was seriously beginning to think of public affairs even at this early age is shown by the fact that about this time he wrote a composition on the American Government, urging the necessity for preserving the Constitution and perpetuating the Union. A Rockport lawyer, by the name of Pickert, who read this composition, declared that “the world couldn’t beat it.”
When the dreaded disease, known as the “milk-sick” created such havoc in Indiana in 1829, the father of Abraham Lincoln, who was of a roving disposition, sought and found a new home in Illinois, locating near the town of Decatur, in Macon county, on a bluff overlooking the Sangamon river. A short time thereafter Abraham Lincoln came of age, and having done his duty to his father, began life on his own account.
His first employer was a man named Denton Offut, who engaged Lincoln, together with his step-brother and John Hanks, to take a boat-load of stock and provisions to New Orleans. Offut was so well pleased with the energy and skill that Lincoln displayed on this trip that he engaged him as clerk in a store which Offut opened a few months later at New Salem.
It was while clerking for Offut that Lincoln performed many of those marvelous feats of strength for which he was noted in his youth, and displayed his wonderful skill as a wrestler. In addition to being six feet four inches high he now weighed two hundred and fourteen pounds. And his strength and skill were so great combined that he could out-wrestle and out-lift any man in that section of the country.
During his clerkship in Offut’s store Lincoln continued to read and study and made considerable progress in grammar and mathematics. Offut failed in business and disappeared from the village. In the language of Lincoln he “petered out,” and his tall, muscular clerk had to seek other employment.
ASSISTANT PILOT ON A STEAMBOAT.
In his first public speech, which had already been delivered, Lincoln had contended that the Sangamon river was navigable, and it now fell to his lot to assist in giving practical proof of his argument. A steamboat had arrived at New Salem from Cincinnati, and Lincoln was hired as an assistant in piloting the vessel through the uncertain channel of the Sangamon river to the Illinois river. The way was obstructed by a milldam. Lincoln insisted to the owners of the dam that under the Federal Constitution and laws no one had a right to dam up or obstruct a navigable stream and as he had already proved that the Sangamon was navigable a portion of the dam was torn away and the boat passed safely through.