I. THE WILDERNESS AS THE GARDEN OF POLITICAL LIBERTY
The pioneer and frontiersman of early America are very strange beings when viewed from our present social customs, or as studied from the so-called refinements of modern interests and conveniences, but, no doubt, the problem is now before us, which shall be the makers of America, the pioneer view of freedom and right, or influence from the present methods of material distinctions and individual success. We may be sure that whichever one of these ideas gets first to the heart of the American boy, that is the ideal that will make of him the resulting man. The American boy loves to go to the bottom of things and so the submarine idea of interests is full of fancies. He likes to get to the top of things and the airship carries him away on the wings of adventure. But this all is merely because he likes freedom and conquest. There is a limit to the submarine and the airship, as there is to all machinery ideals, but there was no limit to the frontiersman and the pioneer. The boy wants no limit, and there is the same opening now to be a frontiersman and a pioneer in human values as there ever was, provided they are human values and not individual aggrandizement. The only consideration is that the scenes have changed and the obstacles known as “things in the way” are different.
The pioneer and the frontiersman were laboring to achieve something far more important than clearing away trees, killing wildcats or subduing the wild men of the wilderness. Such dangerous and exciting work was but an incident in the great struggle. They were striving for a safe, free and sufficient living for family and home. But far greater than the economic interest was the ideal interest of freedom from the will of overlords. That sublime goal of human endeavor is probably no nearer the heart’s desire now than it was then. Society is not yet out of the wilderness of wildcat schemers and wild men monopolists.
The American boy has an immeasurably greater opportunity to continue the heroic and patriotic work of the frontiersman and pioneer. The safety, freedom and sufficiency of America is merely well started on its second period. The first great epoch of American humanity became symbolized in the life of Washington and the second in the life of Lincoln. If there is a third great symbolic character, it is yet to come. The American boy must feel the meaning combined in Washington and Lincoln if he is to be a pioneer civilizing, socially and politically, the frontier of America for a nobler world.
II. SMALL BEGINNINGS IN PUBLIC ESTEEM
The wilderness family was humble as its needs. It was as least as good as its neighbors. One thing we should appreciate as significant, in the destitution of the times, the Lincoln family was adventurous and enterprising until it arrived for final settlement in the richest soil-regions of the Mississippi valley, and the freest mind-regions of political America.
In the spring of 1830, on account of ill health in the neighborhood, Lincoln’s father decided to move from the unpromising forests of Indiana to the fertile prairies of Illinois. Friends and relatives had already preceded him, and had sent back glowing accounts of the prairie lands. When the family arrived in Illinois, Lincoln was probably as near destitute as ever in his life, and he entered into a contract “to split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut bark that would make a pair of trousers.”
Lincoln was now past twenty-one, and, it may be said, not until his arrival at New Salem had he found firm ground on which to begin building to some plan of life. Undoubtedly, his vision of the future was one of very vague dreams. That he was adventurous and looked beyond his community for the fulfillment of his fortunes is shown in his effort at commercial enterprise with nothing as his capital. He now arranged to take a second raft of home goods to New Orleans. Such a venture required no small amount of courage and self-reliance.
Wide observation with suitable thinking seems to give one prudence and steadiness of mind in emergencies. In several trying instances this proved to be true in Lincoln’s experience, long before the civilization of America was depending upon his warm heart and clear head. Many such instances seem as trivial as the trimmings of a sapling, but they are the perfecting process that makes possible the great oak.
When his flatboat was finished at New Salem, it was necessary to have a canoe that was to trail along behind the boat. The canoe was made from a dugout log. When it was shoved into the booming Sangamon river, his two friends, John Seamon and Walter Carmon, sprang into it for the first ride, but the stream was too swift for them. The current began to sweep them away down stream.