The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

by William E. Barton

The first is the period of his boyhood, from his birth in Kentucky until his coming of age and the removal of his family from Indiana into Illinois.

The second is the period of his early manhood, from the time he left his father's home until he took up his residence in Springfield.

The third is the period of his life in Springfield, from his first arrival on April 15, 1837, until his final departure on February 11, 1861, for his inauguration as President.

The fourth is the period covered by his presidency, from his inauguration, March 4, 1861, until his death, April 15, 1865.

Before considering at length the testimony of the people who knew him, except as that testimony relates to these particular epochs, we will consider the life of Lincoln as it was related to the conditions in which he lived in these successive periods.

The first period in the life of Abraham Lincoln includes the twenty-one years from his birth to his majority, and is divided into two parts,—the first seven and one-half years of his life in the backwoods of Kentucky, and the following thirteen years in the wilderness of southern Indiana.

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on Sunday, February 12, 1809. He was the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who were married near Beechland, Washington County, Kentucky, on June 12, 1806, when Thomas was twenty-eight and Nancy twenty-three. Nine days before the birth of Abraham Lincoln the territory of Illinois was organized by Act of Congress; the boy and the future State were twin-born. For four years the family lived on the Rock Spring farm, three miles from Hodgenville, in Hardin, now Larue County, Kentucky. When he was four years old his parents moved to a better farm on Knob Creek. Here he spent nearly four years more, and he and his sister, Sarah, began going to school. His first teacher was Zachariah Riney; his second, Caleb Hazel.

In the autumn of 1816, Thomas Lincoln loaded his household goods upon a small flatboat of his own construction and floated down Knob Creek, Salt River, and the Ohio, and landed on the northern bank of the Ohio River. He thence returned and brought his family, who traveled on horseback. The distance to where the goods had been left was only about fifty miles in a straight line from the old home in Kentucky, but was probably a hundred miles by the roads on which they traveled. Thomas doubtless rode one horse with a child behind him, and Nancy rode the other, also carrying a child behind her saddle.

When the family arrived at the point where the goods had been left, a wagon was hired, and Thomas Lincoln, with his wife, his two children, and all his worldly possessions, moved sixteen miles into the wilderness to a place which he had already selected, and there made his home. That winter and the greater part of the following year were spent in a "half-faced camp" from which the family moved in the following autumn to a log cabin, erected by Thomas Lincoln. For more than a year he was a squatter on this farm, but subsequently entered it and secured title from the government. Here Nancy Hanks Lincoln died, October 5, 1818, when Abraham was less than ten years old. A year later Thomas Lincoln returned to Kentucky and married Sally Bush Johnson, a widow, with three children. She brought with her better furniture than the cabin afforded, and also brought a higher type of culture than Thomas Lincoln had known. She taught her husband so that he was able with some difficulty to read the Bible and to sign his own name. On this farm in the backwoods in the Pigeon Creek settlement, with eight or ten families as neighbors, and with the primitive village of Gentryville a mile and a half distant, Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood. Excepting for a brief experience as a ferryman on the Ohio River and a trip to New Orleans which he made upon a flatboat, his horizon was bounded by this environment from the time he was eight until he was twenty-one.

The cabin in which the Lincoln family lived was a fairly comfortable house. It was eighteen feet square and the logs were hewn. It was high enough to admit a loft, where Abe slept, ascending to it by wooden pins driven into the logs. The furniture, excepting that brought by Sally Bush, was very primitive and made by Thomas Lincoln. Three-legged stools answered for chairs, and the bedsteads had only one leg each, the walls supporting the other three corners.