[i-18] Probably Webster’s American Spelling Book, Dilworth’s Spelling Book, Pike’s Arithmetic, Murray’s English Reader, Scott’s Lessons in Elocution, and the Kentucky Preceptor. Lincoln studied Kirkham’s Grammar after he left home. See Dodge, 4-6; Sumner, ix, 375; Scripps, 3; Herndon, i, 34, 44-45, note, 75-76; Lamon, 37, note, 50; Hitchcock, 87; Atkinson, 18; Leland, 22; Browne, 70, 96; Brooks, 54; Morse, i, 19; Holland, 46; Tarbell’s Early Life, 124-25, 132; Tarbell, i, 66-67; Nicolay and Hay, i, 84; Nicolay, 25-26; Nicolay’s Boy’s Life, 36-37; Ketcham, 66; Howells, 29-30; Irelan, xvi, 96-97; Stoddard, 70; Browne’s Lincoln and Men, i, 158-59; Jones, 8.
[i-19] Scripps, 3; Speed, 38; Herndon, i, 36; Lamon, 37, 57 note; Tarbell, i, 29-34; Binns, 18-19; Atkinson, 23-27; Selby, 45; Stowe, 15; Nicolay and Hay, i, 35; Oldroyd, 33-34; McClure’s Stories, 22-23; Schurz’s Essay, 4-5; Chittenden, 433-34; Nicolay, 14; Nicolay’s Boy’s Life, 23; Morse, i, 13; Swett’s Reminiscences, in Rice, 459; Raymond, 22; Hobson, 30-31; Barrett (New), i, 23-24; Arnold, 21; Brooks, 23-24, 29-30; Browne, 66-68; Holland, 31; Morgan, 19-21; Whitney’s Life, i, 41-42; Tarbell’s Early Life, 69-71; French, 24-25; Hitchcock, 87-88; Leland, 22; Stoddard, 32-33, 36-37, 43; Sumner, ix, 375; Curtis’s Lincoln, 56-58; Beach, 8-9; H. W. Mabie, in the Chautauquan, April, 1900, pp. 33-34, and in the Outlook, February 20, 1904, pp. 454-55. See also infra, p. 331.
[i-20] According to most of our authorities this was the book by Mason L. Weems, entitled The Life of George Washington; with curious anecdotes, equally honourable to himself and exemplary to his young countrymen. But Scripps (3), Raymond (21-22), Brockett (47), and Holland (32) are apparently accurate in stating that the work was Dr. David Ramsay’s The Life of Washington. It should be remembered that Mr. Lincoln himself, looking with uncommon care through the advance sheets of Scripps’s biography, published in 1860, made no correction as to the name Ramsay there employed in connection with the anecdote. Lincoln’s reference to Weems’s Life, moreover, in the speech at Trenton (Works, vi, 150-51), indicates that he had read that book during his early childhood—some years before he could as a “tall and long-armed” youth have “made a clean sweep” of Crawford’s fodder-corn.
[i-21] Herndon, i, 52, note.
[i-22] For the fuller accounts of this episode see: Whitney’s Life, i, 42-43; Arnold, 23; Raymond, 21-22; Lamon, 38, 50-51, 55, 66, note; Scripps, 3; Holland, 31-32; Brockett, 47-48; Herndon, i, 37, 52, note; Stoddard, 37-38; French, 26; Irelan, xvi, 55-56; Brooks, 24-25; Barrett, 25-26; Browne, 67, 69-70; Bartlett, 116-17. A somewhat fanciful narrative may be read in Thayer, 120-30, 177.
[i-23] Herndon, i, 29-31; Pratt, 11-12; Hapgood, 18-19. An instance of truth-telling by Lincoln, regardless of impending punishment, quite after the Weems manner, is related by Thayer (110-11), in his story about the broken buck’s horn.
[i-24] Lamon, 71.
[i-25] How serious these abuses ultimately became may be inferred from Merrick’s narrative (174-80), and from what Horace White says on the subject, in Money and Banking, pp. 351-52:—
“The bewildering state of the paper currency before the Civil War may be learned from the numerous bank-note reporters and counterfeit detectors of the period. It was the aim of these publications to give early information to enable the public to avoid spurious and worthless notes in circulation. These were of various kinds: (1) ordinary counterfeits; (2) genuine notes altered from lower denominations to higher ones; (3) genuine notes of failed banks altered to the names of solvent banks; (4) genuine notes of solvent banks with forged signatures; (5) spurious notes, such as those of banks that had no existence; (6) spurious notes of good banks, as 20’s of a bank that never issued 20’s; (7) notes of old, closed banks still in circulation.
“The number of counterfeit and spurious notes was quite appalling, and disputes between payer and payee as to the goodness of notes were of frequent occurrence, ranging over the whole gamut of doubts,—as to whether the issuing bank was sound or unsound, whether the note was genuine or counterfeit, and, if sound and genuine, whether the discount was within reasonable limits.”