HIS FIRST SIGHT OF SLAVERY.
In May, 1831, Lincoln and a few companions went to New Orleans on a flat-boat and remained there a month. It was there that he witnessed for the first time negro men and women sold like animals. The poor beings were chained, whipped and scourged. “Against this inhumanity his sense of right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened to a realization of what he had often heard and read,” writes one of his biographers, Ida M. Tarbell. One morning, in his rambles with his friends over the city, he passed a slave auction. A comely mulatto girl of vigorous physique was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh, and made her trot up and down the room like a horse to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said, that “bidders might satisfy themselves” whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not. “The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of unconquerable hate.” He remarked to his companions: “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing (slavery) I’ll hit it hard.”
LINCOLN AND DAVIS IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR.
Abraham Lincoln had a very brief experience with actual warfare. He enlisted with a company of volunteers to take part in the Black Hawk war. It was the custom in those days for each company to elect its own Captain, and Lincoln was chosen Captain of his company almost unanimously. He was heard to say many times in after life that no other success in his life had given him such pleasure as did this one. His command did little, as they were never engaged in a pitched battle, so Lincoln had to be content “with the reputation of being the best comrade and story-teller in the camp.” It is a peculiar coincidence that Jefferson Davis also served as an officer in this war.
LINCOLN’S GLOWING TRIBUTE TO HIS MOTHER.
These famous words originated with the good and lowly Abraham Lincoln:
“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”