When Abraham was fifteen or sixteen, he began to exercise his memory in a new direction, by frequenting not only religious but political meetings, and by mounting the stump of a tree the day after and repeating with great accuracy all he had heard. It is said that he mimicked with great skill not only the tones of preachers and orators, but also their gestures and facial expressions. Anything like cruelty to man or beast would always inspire him to an original address, in which he would preach vigorously against inflicting pain. Wherever he spoke an audience was sure to assemble, and as this frequently happened in the harvest-field, the youthful orator or actor was often dragged down by his angry father and driven to his work. His wit and humour, his inexhaustible fund of stories, and, above all, his kind heart, made him everywhere a favourite. Women, says Mr. Lamon, were especially pleased, for he was always ready to do any kind of work for them, such as chopping wood, making a fire, or nursing a baby. Any family was glad when he was hired to work with them, since he did his work well, and made them all merry while he was about it. In 1825, he was employed by James Taylor as a ferry-man, to manage a boat which crossed the Ohio and Anderson’s Creek. In addition to this he worked on the farm, acted as hostler, ground corn, built the fires, put the water early on the fire, and prepared for the mistress’s cooking. Though he was obliged to rise so early, he always studied till nearly midnight. He was in great demand when hogs were slaughtered. For this rough work he was paid 31 cents (about 16d.) a-day. Meanwhile, he became incredibly strong. He could carry six hundred pounds with ease; he once picked up some huge posts which four men were about to lift, and bore them away with little effort. Men yet alive have seen him lift a full barrel of liquor and drink from the bung-hole. “He could sink an axe,” said an old friend, “deeper into wood than any man I ever saw.” He was especially skilled in wrestling, and from the year 1828 there was no man, far or near, who would compete with him in it.[10] From his boyhood, he was extremely temperate. Those who have spoken most freely of his faults admit that, in a country where a whiskey-jug was kept in every house, Lincoln never touched spirits except to avoid giving offence. His stepmother thought he was temperate to a fault.
Meanwhile, as the youth grew apace, the neighbouring village of Gentryville had grown with him. Books and cultivated society became more accessible. The great man of the place was a Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, whose shop supplied all kinds of goods required by farmers. Mr. Jones took a liking to young Lincoln, employed him sometimes, taught him politics, giving him deep impressions in favour of Andrew Jackson, the representative of the Democratic party, and finally awoke Abraham’s ambition by admiring him, and predicting that he would some day be a great man. Another friend was John Baldwin, the village blacksmith, who was, even for a Western American wag, wonderfully clever at a jest, and possessed of an inexhaustible fund of stories. It was from John Baldwin that Lincoln derived a great number of the quaint anecdotes with which he was accustomed in after years to illustrate his arguments. His memory contained thousands of these drolleries; so that, eventually, there was no topic of conversation which did not “put him in mind of a little story.” In some other respects, his acquisitions were less useful. Though he knew a vast number of ballads, he could not sing one; and though a reader of Burns, certain of his own satires and songs, levelled at some neighbours who had slighted him, were mere doggerel, wanting every merit, and very bitter. But, about 1827, he contributed an article on temperance and another on American politics to two newspapers, published in Ohio. From the praise awarded by a lawyer, named Pritchard, to the political article, it would appear to have been very well written. Even in this first essay in politics, Lincoln urged the principle by which he became famous, and for which he died—adherence to the constitution and the integrity of the American Union.
In March, 1828, Abraham Lincoln was hired by Mr. Gentry, the proprietor of Gentryville, as “bow-hand,” and “to work the front oars,” on a boat going with a cargo of bacon to New Orleans. This was a trip of 1800 miles, and then, as now, the life of an Ohio and Mississippi boatman was full of wild adventure. One incident which befel the future President was sufficiently strange. Having arrived at a sugar-plantation six miles below Baton Rouge, the boat was pulled in, and Lincoln, with his companion, a son of Mr. Gentry, went to sleep. Hearing footsteps in the night, they sprang up, and saw that a gang of seven negroes were coming on board to rob or murder. Seizing a hand-spike, Lincoln rushed towards them, and as the leader jumped on the boat, knocked him into the water. The second, third, and fourth, as they leaped aboard, were served in the same way, and the others fled, but were pursued by Lincoln and Gentry, who inflicted on them a severe beating. In this encounter, Abraham received a wound the scar of which he bore through life. It is very probable that among these negroes who would have taken the life of the future champion of emancipation, there were some who lived to share its benefits and weep for his death.[11]
It was during this voyage, or about this time, that two strangers paid Abraham half a silver dollar each for rowing them ashore in a boat. Relating this to Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, he said—“You may think it was a very little thing, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely believe that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that time.”
CHAPTER II.
Lincoln’s Appearance—His First Public Speech—Again at New Orleans—Mechanical Genius—Clerk in a Country Store—Elected Captain—The Black Hawk War—Is a successful Candidate for the Legislature—Becomes a Storekeeper, Land-Surveyor, and Postmaster—His First Love—The “Long Nine”—First Step towards Emancipation.
In 1830, Thomas Lincoln had again tired of his home, and resolved to move Westward. This time he did not change without good reason: an epidemic had appeared in his Indiana neighbourhood, which was besides generally unhealthy. Therefore, in the spring, he and Abraham, with Dennis Hanks and Levi Hall, who had married one of Mrs. Lincoln’s daughters by her first husband, with their families, thirteen in all, having packed their furniture on a waggon, drawn by four oxen, took the road for Illinois. After journeying 200 miles in fifteen days, Thomas Lincoln settled in Moron County, on the Sangamon River, about ten miles west of Decatur. Here they built a cabin of hewn timber, with a smoke-house for drying meat, and a stable, and broke up and fenced fifteen acres of land.
Abraham Lincoln was now twenty-one, and his father had been a hard master, taking all his wages. He therefore, after doing his best to settle the family in their new home, went forth to work for himself among the farmers. One George Cluse, who worked with Abraham during the first year in Illinois, says that at that time he was “the roughest-looking person he ever saw: he was tall, angular, and ungainly, and wore trousers of flax and tow, cut tight at the ankle and out at the knees. He was very poor, and made a bargain with Mrs. Nancy Miller to split 400 rails for every yard of brown jean, dyed with walnut bark, that would be required to make him a pair of trousers.”
Thomas Lincoln found, in less than a year, that his new home was the most unhealthy of all he had tried. So he went Westward again, moving to three new places until he settled at Goose Nest Prairie, in Coles County, where he died at the age of seventy-three, “as usual, in debt.” From the time of his death, and as he advanced in prosperity, Abraham aided his stepmother in many ways besides sending her money. It was at Decatur that he made his first public speech, standing on a keg. It was on the navigation of the Sangamon River, and was delivered extemporaneously in reply to one by a candidate for the Legislature, named Posey.
During the winter of 1831, a trader, named Denton Offutt, proposed to John Hanks, Abraham Lincoln, and John D. Johnston, his stepmother’s son, to take a flat-boat to New Orleans. The wages offered were very high—fifty cents a day to each man, and sixty dollars to be divided among them at the end of the trip. After some delay, the boat, loaded with corn, pigs, and pork, sailed, but just below New Salem, on the Sangamon, it stuck on a dam, but was saved by the great ingenuity of Lincoln, who invented a novel apparatus for getting it over. This seems to have turned his mind to the subject of overcoming such difficulties of navigation, and in 1849 he obtained a patent for “an improved method of lifting vessels over shoals.” The design is a bellows attached to each side of the hull, below the water-line, to be pumped full of air when it is desired to lift the craft over a shoal. The model, which is eighteen or twenty inches long, and which is now in the Patent Office at Washington, appears to have been cut with a knife from a shingle and a cigar-box.[12] John Hanks, apparently a most trustworthy and excellent man, declared that it was during this trip, while at New Orleans, Lincoln first saw negroes chained, maltreated, and whipped. It made a deep impression on his humane mind, and, years after, he often declared that witnessing this cruelty first induced him to think slavery wrong. At New Orleans the flat-boat discharged its cargo, and was sold for its timber. Lincoln returned on a steamboat to St. Louis, and thence walked home. He had hardly returned, before he received a challenge from a famous wrestler, named Daniel Needham. There was a great assembly at Wabash Point, to witness the match, where Needham was thrown with so much ease that his pride was more hurt than his body.