William G. Greene was one of the earliest friends of Lincoln at New Salem. He stood on the bank of the Sangamon River on the 19th of April, 1831, and watched Lincoln bore a hole in the bottom of the flatboat, which had lodged on the mill-dam, so that the water might run out. A few months later he and Lincoln were both employed by the enterprising Denton Offutt, as clerks in the store and managers of the mill which had been leased by Offutt. It was William G. Greene who, returning home from college at Jacksonville on a vacation, brought Richard Yates with him, and introduced him to Lincoln, the latter being found stretched out on the cellar door of Bowling Green's cabin reading a book. Mr. Greene was born in Tennessee in 1812, and went to Illinois in 1822. After the disappearance of New Salem he removed to Tallula, a few miles away, where in after years he engaged in the banking business. He died in 1894, after amassing a fortune.
NEW ORLEANS IN 1831.
The raft over the New Salem dam, the party went on to New Orleans without trouble, reaching there in May, 1831, and remaining a month. It must have been a month of intense intellectual activity for Lincoln. New Orleans was entering then on her "flush times." Commerce was increasing at a rate which dazzled merchants and speculators, and drew them in shoals from all over the United States. From 1830 to 1840 no other American city increased in such a ratio; exports and imports, which in 1831 amounted to $26,000,000, in 1835 had more than doubled. The Creole population had held the sway so far in the city; but now it came into competition and often into contest with a pushing, ambitious, and frequently unscrupulous native American party. To these two predominating elements were added Germans, French, Spanish, negroes and Indians. Cosmopolitan in its make-up, the city was even more cosmopolitan in its life. Everything was to be seen in New Orleans in those days, from the idle luxury of the wealthy Creole to the organization of filibustering juntas. The pirates still plied their trade in the Gulf, and the Mississippi River brought down hundreds of river boatmen—one of the wildest, wickedest sets of men that ever existed in any city.
Lincoln and his companions probably tied their boat up beside thousands of others. It was the custom then to tie up such craft along the river front where St. Mary's Market now stands, and one could walk a mile, it is said, over the tops of these boats without going ashore. No doubt Lincoln went, too, to live in the boatmen's rendezvous, called the "Swamp," a wild, rough quarter, where roulette, whiskey, and the flint-lock pistol ruled.
All of the picturesque life, the violent contrasts of the city, he would see as he wandered about; and he would carry away the sharp impressions which are produced when mind and heart are alert, sincere, and healthy.
In this month spent in New Orleans Lincoln must have seen much of slavery. At that time the city was full of slaves, and the number was constantly increasing; indeed, one-third of the New Orleans increase in population between 1830 and 1840 was in negroes. One of the saddest features of the institution was to be seen there in its most aggravated form—the slave market. The great mass of slave-holders of the South, who looked on the institution as patriarchal, and who guarded their slaves with conscientious care, knew little, it should be said, of this terrible traffic. Their transfer of slaves was humane, but in the open markets of the city it was attended by shocking cruelty and degradation. Lincoln witnessed in New Orleans for the first time the revolting sight of men and women sold like animals Mr. Herndon says that he often heard Mr. Lincoln refer to this experience: "In New Orleans for the first time," he writes, "Lincoln beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw 'negroes in chains—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. No doubt, as one of his companions has said, 'slavery ran the iron into him then and there.' One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl 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.' Bidding his companions follow him, he said, 'Boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that thing' (meaning slavery), 'I'll hit it hard.'"
MENTOR GRAHAM.
Mentor Graham was the New Salem school-master. He it was who assisted Lincoln in mastering Kirkham's grammar, and later gave him valuable assistance when Lincoln was learning the theory of surveying. He taught in a little log school-house on a hill south of the village, just across Green's Rocky Branch. Among his pupils was Ann Rutledge, and the school was often visited by Lincoln. In 1845, Mentor Graham was defendant in a lawsuit in which Lincoln and Herndon were attorneys for the plaintiff, Nancy Green. It appears from the declaration, written by Lincoln's own hand, that on October 28, 1844, Mentor Graham gave his note to Nancy Green for one hundred dollars, with John Owens and Andrew Beerup as sureties, payable twelve months after date. The note not being paid when due, suit was brought. That Lincoln, even as an attorney, should sue Mentor Graham may seem strange; but it is no surprise when it is explained that the plaintiff was the widow of Bowling Green—the woman who, with her husband, had comforted Lincoln in an hour of grief. Justice, too, in this case, was clearly on her side. The lawsuit seems never to have disturbed the friendly relations between Lincoln and Mentor Graham. The latter's admiration for the former was unbounded to the day of his death. Mentor Graham lived on his farm near the ruins of New Salem until 1860, when he removed to Petersburg. There he lived until 1885, when he removed to Greenview, Illinois. Later he went to South Dakota, where he died about 1892, at the ripe old age of ninety-odd years.
Mr. Herndon gives John Hanks as his authority for this statement. But this is plainly an error, for, according to Mr. Lincoln himself, Hanks did not go on to New Orleans, but having a family and being likely to be detained from home longer than at first expected, turned back at St. Louis. Though there is reason for believing that Lincoln was deeply impressed on this trip by something he saw in a New Orleans slave market, and that he often referred to it, the story told above probably grew to its present proportions by much telling.[7]