[3] Lamon, p. 7.
[4] In 1865, I saw many companies and a few regiments “mustered out” in Nashville, Tennessee. In the most intelligent companies, only one man in eight or nine could sign his name. Fewer still could read.—C. G. L.
[5] J. G. Holland, p. 22.
[6] J. G. Holland, “Life of Lincoln,” p. 28. The children probably slept on the earth. The writer has seen a man, owning hundreds of acres of rich bottom land, living in a log-hut, nearly such as is here described. There was only a single stool, an iron pot, a knife, and a gun in the cabin, but no bedstead, the occupant and his wife sleeping in two cavities in the dirt-floor. Such had been their home for years.
[7] Lamon, vol. i., pp. 31 and 40. Abraham’s father is said by Dennis Hanks (from whom Mr. Herndon, Lamon’s authority, derived much information) to have loved his son, but it is certain that, at the same time, he treated him very cruelly. Hanks admits that he had several times seen little Abraham knocked headlong from the fence by his father, while civilly answering questions put by travellers as to their way.
[8] W. H. Herndon, who was for many years the law-partner of Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to me, written not long after the murder of his old friend, earnestly asserted his opinion that the late President was a greater man than General Washington, founding his opinion on the greater difficulties which he subdued.—C. G. L.
[9] “Abraham’s poverty of books was the wealth of his life.”—J. G. Holland.
[10] Lamon, p. 54.
[11] Holland and Lamon.
[12] Vide Ripley and Dana’s “Cyclopædia;” also, article from the Boston “Commercial Advertiser,” cited by Lamon.