Abraham Lincoln.
One of its ablest and most inspiring leaders was Abraham Lincoln. He was born in a rough cabin in Kentucky, February 12, 1809. When he was seven years old, the family moved to Indiana, and settled about eighteen miles north of the Ohio River. The journey to their new home was very tedious and lonely, for in some places they had to cut a roadway through the forest. It took them three days to travel the last eighteen miles.
Having arrived safely in November, all set vigorously to work to provide a shelter against the winter. The seven-year old boy was healthy, rugged, and active, and from early morning till late evening he worked with his father, chopping trees and cutting poles and boughs for their “camp,” the rude shelter in which they were to live until spring.
This “camp” was a mere shed, only fourteen feet square and open on one side. It was built of poles lying one upon another and had a thatched roof of boughs and leaves. As there was no chimney, there could be no fire within the enclosure, and it was necessary to keep one burning all the time just in front of the open side.
Lincoln’s Birthplace.
During this first winter in the wild woods of Indiana the little boy must have lived a very busy life. There was much to do in building the cabin which was to take the place of the “camp,” and in cutting down trees and making a clearing for the corn-planting of the coming spring.
After spending the winter in the “camp,” the Lincoln family, in the following spring, moved into the newly built log cabin. This had no windows, and no floor except the bare earth. There was an opening on one side, which was used as a doorway, but there was no door, nor was there so much as an animal’s skin to keep out the rain or the snow or to protect the family from the cold wind.
In this rough abode the rude and simple furniture was very much like what we have already seen in the cabins of the Tennessee settlers. For chairs there was the same kind of three-legged stools, made by smoothing the flat side of a split log and putting sticks into auger holes underneath. The tables were as simply made, except that they stood on four legs instead of three. The crude bedsteads in the corners of the cabin were made by sticking poles in between the logs at right angles to the wall, the outside corner where the poles met being supported by a crotched stick driven into the ground. Ropes were then stretched from side to side, making a framework upon which shucks and leaves were heaped for bedding, and over all were thrown the skins of wild animals for a covering. Pegs driven into the wall served as a stairway to the loft, where there was another bed of leaves. Here little Abe slept.
Abraham Lincoln’s schooling was brief—not more than a year in all, and the schools he attended were like those we became acquainted with in the early settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee. During his last school-days he had to go daily a distance of four and one-half miles from his home, with probably no roadway except the deer path through the forest. His midday lunch was a corn dodger, which he carried in his pocket.