A. Lincoln_ A Biography.
by Ronald C White & Jr_.
CHAPTER 1.
A. Lincoln and the Promise of America
-e signed his name A. Lincoln. A visitor to Abraham Lincoln"s Springfield, Illinois, home at Eighth and Jackson would find "A. Lincoln" in silvered Roman characters affixed to an octagonal black plate on the front door. All through his life, people sought to complete the A- A-to define Lincoln, to label or libel him. Immediately after his death and continuing to the present, Americans have tried to explain the nation"s most revered president. A. Lincoln continues to fascinate us because he eludes simple definitions and final judgments.
Tall, raw boned, and with an unruly shock of black hair, his appearance could not have been more different from that of George Washington and the other founding fathers. Walt Whitman, who saw the president regularly in Washington, D.C., wrote that Lincoln"s face was "so awful ugly it becomes beautiful." But when Lincoln spoke, audiences forgot his appearance as they listened to his inspiring words.
He is one of the few Americans whose life and words bridge time. Illinois senator Everett Dirksen said fifty years ago, "The first task of every politician is to get right with Lincoln." At critical moments in our nation"s history, his eloquent words become contemporary.
As a young man, he won the nickname "Honest Abe" when his store in New Salem, Illinois, "winked out." Rather than cut and run from his debts in the middle of the night, as was common on the frontier, he stayed and paid back what he called his "National Debt." His political opponents invented a long list of denunciations, ranging from "the Black Republican" to "the original gorilla" to "the dictator." His supporters crafted monikers of admiration: "Old Abe," affectionately attached to him while he was still a relatively young man, and the "Rail Splitter," to remind voters in the 1860 presidential campaign of his roots in what was then the Western frontier. During the Civil War, admiration became endearment when the soldiers he led as commander in chief called him "Father Abraham." After his controversial decision to sign the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation on New Year"s Day 1863, grateful Americans, black and white, honored him with the t.i.tle "the Great Emanci pator."
Each name became a signpost pointing to the ways Lincoln grew and changed through critical episodes in his life. Each was an attempt to define him, whether by characterization or caricature.
Yet how did Lincoln define himself? He never kept a diary. He wrote three brief autobiographical statements, one pointedly in the third person. As the Lincolns prepared to leave for Washington in the winter of 1861, Mary Lincoln, to protect her privacy, burned her correspondence with her husband in the alley behind their Springfield home. In an age when one did not tell all, Lincoln seldom shared his innermost feelings in public. Lincoln"s law partner, William Herndon, summed it up "He was the most ... shut-mouthed man that ever existed." Yet when Lincoln spoke, he offered some of the most inspiring words ever uttered on the meaning of America.
Each generation of Americans rightfully demands a new engagement with the past. Fresh questions are raised out of contemporary experiences. Does he deserve the t.i.tle "the Great Emanc.i.p.ator"? Was Lincoln a racist? Did he invent, as some have charged, the authoritarian, imperial presidency? How did Lincoln reshape the modern role of commander in chief? How are we to understand Mary Lincoln and their marriage? What were Lincoln"s religious beliefs? How did he connect religion to politics? As we peel back each layer of Lincoln"s life, these questions foster only more questions.
Actually, Lincoln did keep a journal, but he never wrote in a single record book. What I call Lincoln"s "diary" consists of hundreds of notes he composed for himself over his adult life. He recorded his ideas on sc.r.a.ps of paper, filing them in his top hat or his bottom desk drawer. He wrote them for his eyes only. These reflections bring into view a private Lincoln. They reveal a man of intellectual curiosity who was testing a wide range of ideas, puzzling out problems, constructing philosophical syllogisms, and sometimes disclosing his personal feelings. In these notes we find his evolving thoughts on slavery, his envy at the soaring career of Stephen Douglas, and the intellectual foundations of his Second Inaugural Address.
Lincoln"s moral integrity is the strong trunk from which all the branches of his life grew. His integrity has many roots-in the soil, in Shakespeare, and in the Bible. Ambition was present almost from the beginning, and he had to learn to prune this branch that it not grow out of proportion in his life. Often, when contemporary Americans try to trace an inspired idea or a shimmering truth about our national ident.i.ty, again and again we find Lincoln"s initials carved on some tree-AL-for he was there before us.
Lincoln was always comfortable with ambiguity. In a private musing, he prefaced an affirmation, "I am almost ready to say this is probably true." The lawyer in Lincoln delighted in approaching a question or problem from as many sides as possible, helping him appreciate the views of others, even when those opinions opposed his own.
In an alternative life, Lincoln might have enjoyed a career as an actor in the Shakespearean plays he loved. As a lawyer, he became a lead actor on the stages of the courthouses of the Eighth Judicial Circuit of central Illinois. As president, he was a skillful director of a diverse cast of characters, civilian and military, many of whom often tried to upstage him. Although his military experience was limited to a few months in the Black Hawk War of 1832, Lincoln would become the nation"s first true commander in chief, defining and shaping that position into what it is today.
Lincoln is the president who laughs with us. His winsome personality reveals itself in his self-deprecating humor. As a young lawyer and congressman, his satire could sting and hurt political foes, but later in life he demonstrated a more gentle sense of humor that traded on his keen sense of irony and paradox. During the Civil War, some politicians wondered how Lincoln could still laugh, but he appreciated that humor and tragedy, as portrayed in Shakespeare"s plays, are always close companions.
Recently, the question has been asked with renewed intensity: What did Lincoln really believe about slavery? Born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and becoming a politician in Illinois, Lincoln answered this question differently in his developing engagement with slavery throughout his life. One of the reasons he hated slavery was that it denied the American right to rise to African-Americans. In debates with Stephen Douglas and conversations with African-American leader Frederick Dougla.s.s, Lincoln understood that in doing battle with slavery, he was wrestling with the soul of America.
Lincoln has often been portrayed as not religious, in part because he never joined a church. How to reconcile this, then, with the deep religious insights of his second inaugural address, given only weeks before his death? Where are the missing pieces in his spiritual odyssey? One clue is a private musing on the question of the activity of G.o.d in the Civil War found after his death by his young secretary, John Hay, in a bottom drawer of his desk. A second is a religious mentor in Washington who played a largely overlooked role in the story of Lincoln"s evolving religious beliefs.
Lincoln would have relished each new advance in the information revolution. Before the modern press conference, he became skilled at shaping public opinion by courting powerful newspaper editors. During the Civil War he learned how to reach a large audience through the writing of "public letters." He understood the potential of the chattering new magnetic telegraph, which allowed him to instantly communicate with generals in the field and become a hands-on commander in chief. In the last year and a half of his life, he surprised members of his cabinet by accepting a clearly secondary role in the dedication at Gettysburg, only to deliver a mere 272 words that stirred a nation.
Even though we have no audio record of Lincoln"s words, he still speaks to us through his expressive letters and his eloquent speeches. Lincoln may not have read the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle"s Treatise on Rhetoric, Treatise on Rhetoric, but he embodied his definition that ethos, or "integrity," is the key to persuasion. Even when Lincoln disappears in his speeches-as he does in the Gettysburg Address, never using the word "I"-they reveal the moral center of the man. but he embodied his definition that ethos, or "integrity," is the key to persuasion. Even when Lincoln disappears in his speeches-as he does in the Gettysburg Address, never using the word "I"-they reveal the moral center of the man.
Lincoln was conservative in temperament. As a young man he believed that the role of his generation was simply to "transmit" the values of the nation"s founders. Over time he came to believe that each generation must redefine America in relation to the problems of its time. By the end of 1862, Lincoln would declare, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present." In the last two and a half years of his life, Lincoln began to think in the future tense: "We must think anew, and act anew." However one decides to define Lincoln, whatever questions one brings to his story, his life and ideas are a prism to America"s past as well as to her future.
CHAPTER 2.
Undistinguished Families 180916 IT IS A GREAT PIECE OF FOLLY TO ATTEMPT TO.
MAKE ANYTHING OUT OF MY EARLY LIFE.
ABRAHAM LINCOLNAutobiography written for John L. Scripps, Chicago Press and Tribune, Chicago Press and Tribune, June 1860 June 1860
-N MAY 1860, ABRAHAM LINCOLN BECAME THE SURPRISE NOMINEE OF the Republican Party for president. The selection catapulted the little-known lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, onto the center stage of American life. Ordinary citizens were both curious and anxious about this lanky Westerner with a meager education and limited political experience. He quickly became courted by journalistic suitors wanting to write his campaign biography. While candidate Lincoln was busy thinking about the nation"s future, the public was eager to learn more about his past. the Republican Party for president. The selection catapulted the little-known lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, onto the center stage of American life. Ordinary citizens were both curious and anxious about this lanky Westerner with a meager education and limited political experience. He quickly became courted by journalistic suitors wanting to write his campaign biography. While candidate Lincoln was busy thinking about the nation"s future, the public was eager to learn more about his past.
John Locke Scripps, a senior editor of the Chicago Press and Tribune, Chicago Press and Tribune, managed to convince Lincoln to write an autobiographical account that would serve as the basis for a campaign biography. This essay of just over three thousand words would prove to be Lincoln"s longest work of autobiography. His description of his early education is typical of the essay"s unusual third-person style: "A. now thinks that the agregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never in a college or Academy as a student; and never inside of a college or academy building till since he had a law-license. What he has in the way of education, he has picked up." managed to convince Lincoln to write an autobiographical account that would serve as the basis for a campaign biography. This essay of just over three thousand words would prove to be Lincoln"s longest work of autobiography. His description of his early education is typical of the essay"s unusual third-person style: "A. now thinks that the agregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never in a college or Academy as a student; and never inside of a college or academy building till since he had a law-license. What he has in the way of education, he has picked up."
Lincoln began his autobiography referring to himself as "A" and progressed to "Mr. L." Remarkably brief about certain periods of his life, the essay stops in 1856 and does not include the 1858 debates with Stephen A. Douglas that first brought him to national attention. Lincoln"s spare account tells us as much as he wanted the public to know.
Scripps would recall the difficulty he encountered "to induce [Lincoln] to communicate the homely facts and incidents of his early life." Plainly uncomfortable talking about his childhood in Kentucky and Indiana, Lincoln told Scripps, "It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life."
AMERICANS HAVE LONG HEARD that Lincoln was little interested in his forebears. This viewpoint misses the paradox of his persistent curiosity about his family history. As he matured, Lincoln explored his family background, writing to rumored relatives in Ma.s.sachusetts and Virginia, but as the 1860 presidential election approached he wished to focus the portrait of himself as a self-made man. In the nineteenth-century world of public politics, where it was an advantage to exemplify the heroic ideal of a self-constructed individual, Lincoln inquired about his family in private. In December 1859, he responded to a request for autobiographical information from a Bloomington, Illinois, newspaper editor. Lincoln said tersely, "My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families." that Lincoln was little interested in his forebears. This viewpoint misses the paradox of his persistent curiosity about his family history. As he matured, Lincoln explored his family background, writing to rumored relatives in Ma.s.sachusetts and Virginia, but as the 1860 presidential election approached he wished to focus the portrait of himself as a self-made man. In the nineteenth-century world of public politics, where it was an advantage to exemplify the heroic ideal of a self-constructed individual, Lincoln inquired about his family in private. In December 1859, he responded to a request for autobiographical information from a Bloomington, Illinois, newspaper editor. Lincoln said tersely, "My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families."
Lincoln became discouraged that he could not trace his lineage back definitively beyond his paternal grandfather. Yet the story of Lincoln"s ancestry is much more complex, and certainly more geographically diverse, than Lincoln could ever have suspected. He knew almost nothing about the generations of Lincolns that stretched all the way back to the early seventeenth century when they migrated with some of the first colonists from England to the New World.
ON A Bl.u.s.tERY MORNING, April 8, 1637, young Samuel Lincoln boarded the April 8, 1637, young Samuel Lincoln boarded the Rose Rose at the port of Great Yarmouth in the county of Norfolk, En gland, for the arduous transatlantic crossing to New England. Two years after the at the port of Great Yarmouth in the county of Norfolk, En gland, for the arduous transatlantic crossing to New England. Two years after the Mayflower Mayflower had landed at Plymouth, Samuel was baptized in St. Andrews Church near Norwich on August 24, 1622. At age fifteen he decided to leave behind his village of Hingham in the east of England and journey to a new life in a New England. had landed at Plymouth, Samuel was baptized in St. Andrews Church near Norwich on August 24, 1622. At age fifteen he decided to leave behind his village of Hingham in the east of England and journey to a new life in a New England.
Samuel Lincoln was one of thousands of English men and women who were pushed as well as pulled from their island home during the politically tumultuous decade of the 1630s. With the flag of England, an upright dark red cross of St. George on a white background, flapping in the breeze, young Samuel became part of "the Great Migration" of nearly two hundred ships and more than thirteen thousand people who set their course for the so-called New World between 1630 and 1640.
Derisively called "Puritans" by their opponents, these emigrants had given up hope of purifying England from the twin tyrannies of state and church. Between 1629 and 1640, King Charles I attempted to rule absolutely without Parliament. At the same time, Archbishop William Laud sought to rid the Church of England of its Puritan members while they sought to further purify it according to the beliefs and practices of the new Protestant churches of Europe. These dissenters were prepared to cross the ocean so they could practice their faith freely.
Like many of his fellow immigrants, Samuel Lincoln may have sailed to New England for both religious and economic reasons. He was coming of age as an apprentice linen weaver just when an economic depression was. .h.i.tting East Anglia. He had heard stories of higher wages in the New World, but he knew that life there could also be harder.
After a journey of more than two months, Samuel Lincoln landed in Salem, in the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, on June 20, 1637. He settled in the new village of Hingham fifteen miles south of Boston. Because of an abundance of weavers, Samuel initially turned to farming. In time he would pursue business ventures earning him enough wealth to build a substantial house. He became a member of the Old Ship Church, which he helped build and which still stands today. For the Puritans, church membership provided not only an individual pathway to G.o.d but a community that transcended economic distinctions. Samuel Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln"s first American ancestor, lived a long life by the standards of the time, dying in 1690 at the age of sixty-seven.
THE NEXT GENERATIONS of American Lincolns carried Samuel"s sense of wanderl.u.s.t. They successively traveled farther and farther from their homes in search of new lands and opportunities on the frontier. The adventures of the Lincoln family"s succeeding generations offer a portrait of the shaping of the American character. of American Lincolns carried Samuel"s sense of wanderl.u.s.t. They successively traveled farther and farther from their homes in search of new lands and opportunities on the frontier. The adventures of the Lincoln family"s succeeding generations offer a portrait of the shaping of the American character.
Samuel"s son, Mordecai Lincoln, moved twice, to Hull and Scituate, both within the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony. Mordecai Lincoln, Jr., Samuel"s grandson, ventured nearly three hundred miles south early in the eighteenth century to the market town of Freehold, the seat of Monmouth County, in what would become New Jersey. There he married Hannah Salter, daughter and niece of two New Jersey a.s.semblymen. Mordecai, Jr., became a successful landowner and businessman. Eventually he moved his family west along the Burlington Road into southeastern Pennsylvania. He enlarged his land holdings and became prosperous in the newly developing iron industry. He erected a forge where the French Creek flowed into the Schuylkill River at Phoenixville, about thirty miles west of Philadelphia. In 1733, he built a s.p.a.cious steep-roofed brick house nestled into the side of a hill a few miles east of Reading, Pennsylvania. It still stands today. Mordecai Lincoln, Jr., the great-great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln, lived in three different colonies before he died in 1735 at age forty-nine. He left behind a substantial estate, including more than one thousand acres of land, plus his iron business.
His eldest son, John Lincoln, inherited lands in New Jersey but decided to continue to reside in Pennsylvania. There he married Rebecca Flower, who came from a prosperous Quaker family. In 1768, John, who headed the fourth generation of American Lincolns, traveled along the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that ran down through Lancaster, York, and Gettysburg. He continued south, eventually reaching the Virginia Road in the Shenandoah Valley. "Virginia John" Lincoln settled on Linville Creek, a tributary of the Shenandoah River, in Rockingham County, near the site of present-day Harrisonburg. At the time, Virginians called these migrating Pennsylvanians "northern men," a designation that meant this part of northern Virginia was becoming a southern extension of Pennsylvania. John Lincoln settled in a part of the Shenandoah Valley where Europeans had begun to live only in the 1730s. They developed small farmsteads, quite different from the large tobacco plantations of the older regions of Virginia. Many of these new immigrants were Quaker farmers who would have nothing to do with slavery.
JOHN"S SON, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln, was born in Pennsylvania in 1744. He would be the last ancestor that Abraham Lincoln could learn much about. In 1770, Abraham married Bathsheba Herring, the daughter of one of the leading families of Rockingham County. He joined the Virginia Militia, becoming a captain in 1776, just as the colonies were declaring their independence. Captain Lincoln, as everyone called him, made a distinguished name for himself in his community.
During this time, Daniel Boone was busy exploring the western part of Virginia, a region called by the Cherokee "Ken-tah-the." "Ken-tah-the." Reports of Kentucky as a new "Eden of the West" sparked great interest, especially in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. In March 1775, Boone and his crew of frontiersmen started constructing the "Wilderness Road" into Kentucky. Nineteenth-century Western artist George Caleb Bingham"s painting Reports of Kentucky as a new "Eden of the West" sparked great interest, especially in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. In March 1775, Boone and his crew of frontiersmen started constructing the "Wilderness Road" into Kentucky. Nineteenth-century Western artist George Caleb Bingham"s painting Daniel Boone Escorting a Band of Pioneers into the Western Country Daniel Boone Escorting a Band of Pioneers into the Western Country depicts a strapping Daniel Boone marching through the c.u.mberland Gap, traversing the Appalachian Mountains just north of where the states of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky meet. This image helped mythologize the great adventure of opening up the Kentucky frontier. depicts a strapping Daniel Boone marching through the c.u.mberland Gap, traversing the Appalachian Mountains just north of where the states of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky meet. This image helped mythologize the great adventure of opening up the Kentucky frontier.
The stories of Daniel Boone"s explorations into Kentucky, the "Eden of the West," may have inspired Lincolns grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, to take his family through the c.u.mberland Gap into Kentucky Grandfather Abraham Lincoln"s decision to continue the family pattern of migration may have come from Boone"s descriptions of Kentucky. In Virginia, it was common to respond to queries regarding the whereabouts of a person by replying, "He"s gone to h.e.l.l or to Kentucky." In 1782, while peace talks to end the Revolutionary War started in Paris, Abraham and Bathsheba Lincoln and their family left the Shenandoah Valley on a two-hundred-mile journey through difficult terrain to Kentucky. Traversing the Wilderness Road, the Lincolns carried their household goods and farm tools, as well as their Bible and a flintlock rifle.
If wanderl.u.s.t was romantic, it could also be perilous. After the French and Indian War ended in 1763, Native Americans were surprised when American settlers pushed into their territories. Even after the Continental Congress established the Ohio River as a dividing line between American Indians and the settlers, colonists continued to attack tribes north of the Ohio in their relentless search for more land. The Indians retaliated with raids into Kentucky. Living at the edge of the constantly moving frontier, the settlers learned to build their homes in or near fortified stockades.
Captain Abraham Lincoln built his family a log cabin on land near Hughes Station, probably just east of what is today Louisville. On a May afternoon in 1786, while Captain Abraham Lincoln and his three sons were out planting corn, a Native American, probably a Shawnee, shot Abraham from the nearby woods. Terrified, his sons Mordecai, fourteen, and John, twelve, ran for the safety of the stockade, leaving their brother Thomas, age six, sobbing beside his dying father. The warrior dashed from the woods, descending upon the younger brother who could be killed or taken away. Young Mordecai turned, steadied his flintlock rifle, and fired at the silver crescent suspended from the neck of the Shawnee warrior, killing his father"s a.s.sailant.
Abraham Lincoln, the future president"s grandfather, was buried in deerskins near Hughes Station. Although only forty-two, he had followed the wealth-building pattern of his father and grandfather in Pennsylvania and Virginia, ama.s.sing more than five thousand acres of Kentucky land. Sixty-eight years later, at age forty-five, his grandson, Abraham, would recall to a newly discovered relative the story of his grandfather"s death, this "legend more strongly than all others imprinted upon my mind and memory."
IN A FRONTIER SOCIETY, the death of a father turned everything upside down. Abraham left his wife, Bathsheba, and their five children ample property, but his sons were too young to carry on the necessary clearing and cultivation of the land.
Thomas Lincoln, the future president"s father, was only six years old when his father died before his eyes. His life without a father and with his oldest brother, Mordecai, managing their father"s estate, would now be lived out in different conditions from his forebears.
Abraham Lincoln would say of his father"s youth, "Even in childhood [he] was a wandering, laboring boy." This brief comment might suggest that Thomas Lincoln from a very young age had no home or support. In truth, relatives of Bathsheba Lincoln reached out to help after her husband"s death. Hannaniah Lincoln, a cousin who had served as a captain in the Revolutionary War, welcomed Bathsheba and her five children into his home forty miles to the south near Springfield, Kentucky.
Within a few years of his father"s death, young Thomas Lincoln was sent out to work. He labored on neighboring farms, earned three shillings a day at a mill, and worked one year for his uncle Isaac on his farm in the Watauga River Valley in Tennessee. Returning to Kentucky, Thomas apprenticed as a carpenter and cabinetmaker in a shop in Elizabethtown.
The lens of history has often filtered Thomas Lincoln in dark and disapproving colors, detractors framing him as lacking in initiative and economic accomplishment. Part of this portrait comes from a son who would say his father "grew up literally without education," the very value Abraham Lincoln would come to prize the most.
The filter should be removed in order to color in a more accurate picture. Reminiscences about Abraham Lincoln"s father offer an ambiguous report on what kind of man he truly was. Thomas Lincoln was a st.u.r.dy man, about five feet ten inches tall, with dark hazel eyes, black hair, and high cheekbones. Although he lacked formal education, this was not unusual on the early American frontier. He served in the local militia, on juries, and became an active member of the Baptist church. Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Abraham Lincoln"s mother, said of Thomas, "He was a man who took the world Easy-did not possess much Envy," observing that Thomas "never thought that gold was G.o.d." One neighbor remembered him as a "plain unpretending plodding man." Another called him a "good quiet citizen," and a third said he told stories with a wry sense of humor, a trait his son would inherit.
One neighbor recalled that Thomas "acc.u.mulated considerable property which he always managed to make way with about as fast as he made it." Like the Lincolns before him, Thomas Lincoln had a hunger for land. At the age of twenty-five, in 1803, he purchased a 238-acre farm on Mill Creek, a tributary of the Salt River, for 118 pounds in cash. At about the same time, he bought two lots in Elizabethtown. Thomas Lincoln"s acc.u.mulation of property was such that within a decade he would rank fifteenth of ninety-eight property owners listed in Hardin County in 1814. For a long time in American presidential history, the demeaning of Thomas Lincoln became a means to set up a contrast with the accomplishments of his supposedly self-made son. The truth, as always, is much more complex.
ON JUNE 12, 1806, Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks. How and when Thomas and Nancy first met and courted has unfortunately disappeared into the mists of time.
Nancy Hanks"s ancestry is also shrouded in mystery. Her forebears may well have traveled the same route as John Lincoln and his family from Pennsylvania to Virginia, also settling in Rockingham County around 1770. Nancy was born in Virginia, probably in 1784, and as a young child traveled to Kentucky in the late 1780s.
Her father, Joseph Hanks, died when Nancy was a young girl, and her mother, Nancy Shipley, died soon thereafter. The family of eight children scattered among various relatives. Her aunt, Lucy Shipley Berry, took Nancy into their family on their farm near Springfield, Kentucky.
Although we don"t know when, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks probably met at the Berrys" two-story log home. Their marriage, presided over by Jesse Head, a well-known Methodist minister, took place at sunset on an early summer evening. Weddings were grand social occasions for people who lived great distances from one another on the frontier. Friends of Thomas and Nancy enjoyed the wedding feast, a barbecue, accompanied by the singing of the good old tunes "The Girl I Left Behind" and "Turkey in the Straw." On their wedding night, Thomas was twenty-eight and Nancy was twenty-two.
Thomas Lincoln lived nearly his whole life as a farmer in Kentucky and Indiana. His relationship with his son has been the subject of much speculation.
The young couple moved to Elizabethtown shortly after their wedding. Etown, as it was called, was a raw frontier settlement made up of mainly log cabins. It boasted a few frame houses, a new courthouse made with brick from the local brickyard, and a debating society. Thomas built a log cabin on one of the two lots he owned.
Thomas and Nancy"s first child, Sarah, was born on February 10, 1807. The biblical name for their daughter had appeared often in the previous generations of Lincolns. Sarah had dark hair and gray eyes. As she grew, many neighbors remarked that she resembled her father.
In December 1808, Thomas sold his first farm and purchased a second farm on the Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, twelve miles southeast of Elizabethtown. The Sinking Spring farm took its name from its freshwater spring at the foot of a deep cave. Thomas built a one-room rude cabin on a knoll above the farm"s spring. The sixteen-by-eighteen-foot cabin"s simple construction consisted of logs lined with clay. It had a dirt floor and a stone fireplace, standard for the day. The cabin may have had a window, without gla.s.s, covered by greased paper. Nancy gave birth to her second child, Abraham, in this new log cabin on February 12, 1809. He was named for his a.s.sa.s.sinated grandfather.
AT THE TIME OF LINCOLN"S birth, Kentucky embodied all that was new in a region people called "the West." Like Abraham"s parents, most settlers had come from someplace else. Life was difficult on the frontier, but letters to relatives on the Atlantic seaboard told stories of people choosing pioneering life, hard though it might be, over the more settled lives they left behind. birth, Kentucky embodied all that was new in a region people called "the West." Like Abraham"s parents, most settlers had come from someplace else. Life was difficult on the frontier, but letters to relatives on the Atlantic seaboard told stories of people choosing pioneering life, hard though it might be, over the more settled lives they left behind.
George Washington, the nation"s first president, died in 1799, ten years before Lincoln"s birth. Such was Washington"s stature that the new nation was still mourning his pa.s.sing, observing in elaborate ceremonies the dates of his birth and death. Within a month of Lincoln"s birth, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, would complete his second term as the third president of the United States. When Jefferson articulated his vision of an America of small farmers, he was thinking of people like the Lincolns.
In later years, Lincoln would say that he could remember nothing of his birthplace and the log cabin at the Sinking Spring farm. As a toddler, he may have wandered the hillsides or explored the cave by the spring. There is little reason to think it was an unhappy place to be born.
In 1811, when Abraham was two, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln moved again, their third move in five years. Drawn by more fertile land, they relocated six miles north to a farm in the k.n.o.b Creek Valley. Thomas could now work the long tongues of level land made rich by k.n.o.b Creek. Heavily wooded steep limestone bluffs, marked by deep gullies and small k.n.o.b-like hills, from which the valley and creek derived their names, bounded the farm. The creek, piercing its way through the limestone rock, was adorned with sycamore and elms, their branches hanging in a protective pattern over the waters. Thomas Lincoln"s chief crop was corn, but he also planted beans. Abraham, like his father and grandfather before him, grew up a farmer"s son.
Young Abraham lived near the old c.u.mberland Trail, the road for travelers on their way from Nashville to Louisville. On many days the boy could watch and wonder at all kinds of people pa.s.sing by: soldiers on their way home from the War of 1812, evangelists taking part in the religious revival called the Second Great Awakening, peddlers selling goods procured from a larger world, promoters of land schemes, and-every once in a while-a coffle of slaves plodding behind a slave trader.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN came of age amid a growing controversy over slavery in Kentucky. David Rice, a Presbyterian minister, had delivered an address before the Kentucky Const.i.tutional Convention of 1792 calling "Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy." Rice argued that slavery was "a standing monument of the tyranny and inconsistency of human governments." He declared slavery to be not only bad for blacks, but corrosive of the values of whites as well. came of age amid a growing controversy over slavery in Kentucky. David Rice, a Presbyterian minister, had delivered an address before the Kentucky Const.i.tutional Convention of 1792 calling "Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy." Rice argued that slavery was "a standing monument of the tyranny and inconsistency of human governments." He declared slavery to be not only bad for blacks, but corrosive of the values of whites as well.
Both Thomas and Nancy Lincoln experienced slavery everywhere they lived. The Berrys, with whom Nancy lived before her marriage, owned five slaves. When Thomas worked for a year in Tennessee, he came to know his uncle Isaac"s six slaves. In 1811, two years after Abraham Lincoln was born, the tax list for Hardin County listed 1,007 slaves for taxation, whereas the white male population over the age of sixteen was 1,627.
The churches in Kentucky became central players in the debate over slavery. The Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians-the largest Pro testant churches in the early settlement in Kentucky-were torn and sometimes divided by the controversy. Jesse Head, the Methodist minister who married Thomas and Nancy, had a reputation for speaking boldly against slavery; it is likely they heard him preach on the subject.
Thomas and Nancy Lincoln attended the South Fork Baptist Church, a Separate Baptist congregation two miles from their Sinking Spring farm. At the time, Baptists in Kentucky were divided into three main varieties. General Baptists emphasized free will, believing that salvation was open to anyone who desired it. Particular Baptists were more exclusive, believing in a strict Calvinism emphasizing G.o.d"s providential initiative in salvation rather than human free will. Separate Baptists, by far the largest group of the Kentucky Baptists, were more experiential and thus emotional in their worship.
In the year before Abraham Lincoln"s birth, the South Fork Baptist Church burst apart in a debate over slavery. In December 1807, the minister, William Whitman, had declared himself to be an "amansapater" (emanc.i.p.ator). In August 1808, fifteen members "went out of the church on account of slavery. "
Thomas and Nancy Lincoln decided to join those helping to found the new Little Mount Baptist Church located three miles northeast of the Sinking Spring farm. William Downs, the organizing pastor, was recognized as one of the "brilliant and fascinating orators" among the Kentucky Baptists. The Lincolns, sitting through Downs"s emotional antislavery sermons, surely brought this into family conversations with young Abraham and Sarah.
"MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTION is of the k.n.o.b Creek place," Lincoln would tell a friend many years later. "I remember that old home very well." Lincoln recalled that one Sat.u.r.day afternoon when "the other boys planted the corn in what we called the big field; it contained seven acres-and I dropped the pumpkin seeds. I dropped two seeds every other hill and every other row." He never forgot what happened next. "There came a big rain in the hills; it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming through the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and all clear off the field." He was eight years old. is of the k.n.o.b Creek place," Lincoln would tell a friend many years later. "I remember that old home very well." Lincoln recalled that one Sat.u.r.day afternoon when "the other boys planted the corn in what we called the big field; it contained seven acres-and I dropped the pumpkin seeds. I dropped two seeds every other hill and every other row." He never forgot what happened next. "There came a big rain in the hills; it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming through the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and all clear off the field." He was eight years old.
Abraham also remembered his brother, Thomas, Jr., born in 1812. Abraham must have hoped he would have a playmate, but Thomas died within several days, the exact date unknown.
Lincoln"s campaign autobiography of 1860 included little mention of his mother. In a section describing his father, he wrote, "He married Nancy Hanks, mother of the present subject." Neighbors remembered she had a fair complexion, with light hair and blue eyes. Friends and neighbors called her "quiet and amiable," of "a Kind disposition," as "Vy affectionate in her family" and with neighbors. She was illiterate. Nancy Hanks Lincoln died before the invention of photography in 1839. Yet Lincoln"s best friend, Joshua Speed, recalled that he spoke of her as his "angel mother."
ABRAHAM ATTENDED THE ONE-ROOM log school two miles north of the Sinking Spring farm for only short periods of time, no more than three or four months total in his five years at the farm. The terms of these subscription schools were erratic, in large measure because the settlers had to provide a stipend and sometimes room and board for the teacher. log school two miles north of the Sinking Spring farm for only short periods of time, no more than three or four months total in his five years at the farm. The terms of these subscription schools were erratic, in large measure because the settlers had to provide a stipend and sometimes room and board for the teacher.
This page from Thomas Dilworth"s New Guide to the English Tongue shows what young Abraham Lincoln first learned in school. Dilworth, an eighteenth-century minister, used the Psalms to teach spelling.
Zachariah Riney, a Catholic born in Maryland, was Abraham"s first teacher. A piece of roughly dressed timber, placed entirely across the room, served as a writing desk for the students.
These early schools were called "blab" schools. Teachers encouraged students to employ the two senses of seeing and hearing. Abraham learned his lessons by reading and reciting aloud, repeating the lessons over and over. For the rest of his life, he always read aloud.
Spelling occupied a central place in the curriculum. Thomas Dilworth"s New Guide to the English Tongue New Guide to the English Tongue served as the main textbook. Dilworth started with one-syllable words of three letters and proceeded to one-syllable words with four, five, and six letters. Lincoln first encountered one-syllable words with three letters in verse: served as the main textbook. Dilworth started with one-syllable words of three letters and proceeded to one-syllable words with four, five, and six letters. Lincoln first encountered one-syllable words with three letters in verse: No Man may put off the Law of G.o.d.The Way of G.o.d is no ill Way.My Joy is in G.o.d all the Day.A bad man is a Foe to G.o.d.
Dilworth, an eighteenth-century English minister, taught moral education while teaching vocabulary and grammar. Lincoln read and memorized words from the Old and New Testaments, especially Psalms and Proverbs. Dilworth used the Psalms for students to learn rhyme and cadence.
Caleb Hazel, Lincoln"s second part-time teacher, a farmer and surveyor, lived on a neighboring farm. He "could perhaps teach spelling reading & indifferent writing & perhaps could Cipher to the rule of three." The quality for which many remembered him was his "large size & bodily Strength to thrash any boy or youth that came to School."
A trustees" book for Hardin County included instructions for teachers to maintain order: restrain card playing and gambling, and suppress "cussing." Abraham Lincoln and other students were not allowed to shoot pop guns, pin guns, or bows and arrows, nor could they throw stones or use other dangerous weapons.
IN 1816, WHEN Abraham Lincoln turned seven, the Lincoln family moved again. After living in Kentucky for thirty-four years, Thomas Lincoln repeated the Lincoln family pattern of picking up and moving in search of better lands. Forty-four years later, Abraham Lincoln would write in his 1860 campaign biography that his father left Kentucky "partly on account of slavery; but chiefly on account of the difficulty of land t.i.tles in Ky." Abraham Lincoln turned seven, the Lincoln family moved again. After living in Kentucky for thirty-four years, Thomas Lincoln repeated the Lincoln family pattern of picking up and moving in search of better lands. Forty-four years later, Abraham Lincoln would write in his 1860 campaign biography that his father left Kentucky "partly on account of slavery; but chiefly on account of the difficulty of land t.i.tles in Ky."
A joke made the rounds in early Kentucky: "Who [ever] buys land in Kentucky, buys a lawsuit." Thomas Lincoln purchased a farm stated to be 230 acres, but the boundaries were uneven. The Kentucky territory was originally the western part of Virginia, and Virginia did not supply surveys of its public lands. This neglect resulted in settlers purchasing "shingled" properties, lands that overlapped one another.
Thomas Lincoln had run afoul of surveying methods and land t.i.tles with all three of his farms. Nearly half of the early settlers in Kentucky lost part or all of their lands due to legal irregularities. Some settlers had to buy their land three or four times in an attempt to gain a clear t.i.tle. Thomas found himself caught up in a land t.i.tle struggle on the k.n.o.b Creek farm. Ten farm families, including the Lincolns, had purchased parts of the ten-thousand-acre Middleton tract. Heirs of Thomas Mid-dleton now sought the land. Lincoln was to be the test case of the ten, but before the case could be decided, Thomas made his decision to move.
The Lincolns and their neighbors were well aware that slavery would never cross north of the Ohio River. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the charter for organizing the Northwest Territory, stated in article 6, "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory." The area defined in the ordinance referred to territories and new states that would be "northwest" of the "River Ohio." Even while fighting the court case, Thomas Lincoln decided to do what many of his friends and neighbors were doing: seek a better opportunity for his family and find a new farm north of the Ohio in the free state of Indiana.
ACROSS SEVEN GENERATIONS, the American Lincolns migrated in search of new lands and fresh opportunities. After Samuel and Mordecai Lincoln, each succeeding forebear of Abraham Lincoln lived in at least three different colonies or states. Lincoln"s cultural heritage was Puritan, Yankee, Middle Atlantic, and Upland South. One by one, all of the sons of John Lincoln who made the trek from Virginia to Kentucky would continue their migration to the free states of either Indiana or Illinois. Several of the daughters married Kentucky men and would continue to live in the South.
Abraham Lincoln thought his family background was "undistinguished." He made this judgment primarily on the basis of what he believed was the lack of achievement of his father. Had he been able to see farther into history, he might have changed his mind. The previous generations of American Lincolns included Puritan courage, adventurous migration, bold commercial ventures, proud military service, and political office holding. Rather than being "undistinguished," many of the qualities that Abraham Lincoln would come to prize in his own life were present in the ancestry of his long, distinguished family.
CHAPTER 3.