It was only a small cabin in a forest-clearing in the wilderness of Indiana. It stood on a knoll overlooking a piece of ground where corn and vegetables grew. In the woods around the cabin were bear, deer, and other wild creatures. The furniture was rude, brought from the East, or made of logs and hickory-sticks, while the bed was a sack of leaves. In the big fireplace, the logs cut from the forest, burned with a cheerful blaze.
And there lived little Abe Lincoln, nine years old, with his father and sister and his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln.
Abe was born in Kentucky. When he was seven, his family moved to the cabin in Indiana. He helped clear the way through the wilderness to the new home. So with swinging the axe and blazing trails, he was made unusually large and strong for his age, alert and courageous—a real backwoods boy.
He could shoot, fish, cut down trees, and work on the farm in the clearing. In his veins ran the red blood of Kentucky pioneers. His grandfather, in the days of Daniel Boone, had been killed by an Indian, while Abe’s father—a child then—had been rescued from this same Indian by his brother, Mordecai Lincoln, a daring lad, who shot the savage with his dead father’s rifle, so saving his little brother.
HOW HE LEARNED TO BE JUST
Let us have faith that Right makes Might, and in that Faith, let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Abraham Lincoln, from his speech at Cooper Institute
But it was not all work for Abe on the new farm in Indiana. He picked wild plums and pawpaws in the woods, and ate corn dodgers, fried bacon, roast wild turkey, and fish caught in the Indiana streams. He went to school when he could, which was not often, for in those days schools were few and far between, and teachers were not many.
But little Abe had the best teacher of all, his mother, Nancy Lincoln. For, though his father could scarcely write his own name, his mother could read, and she loved books. She taught her little son his letters and how to read. Often they sat together in the cabin, Abe and his sister at their mother’s knee, while she read the Bible to them.
“I would rather my son would be able to read the Bible, than to own a farm, if he can’t have but one,” she said.