- CHAPTER V. PAGE The Thirty-Ninth Congress-The Freedmen's Bureau Bill CHAPTER VI. Cabinet Changes-The President and the Army-Reduc- .... 53 CHAPTER VII. Suspension of Edwin M. Stanton-The Contest Over the 62 Lives of the Presidents of the United States. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT. BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD. CHAPTER I. From Virginia to Kentucky-The Lincoln FamilyBirth of Abraham Lincoln-Poor Lands and Poor Farming-Frontier Schoolmasters-Through the Woods and Across the Ohio-The New Log Cabin. THE people of the commonwealth of Virginia and their patriotic governor, Thomas Jefferson, did wonderfully well in the years 1779 and 1780, the darkest years, as some men declared, of the war for American independence. They gave all that they had to the great needs of the Continental Army under Washington and for the support of the Virginia troops under Clarke and other leaders, who were driving back the savages from the Western frontier. So completely was the latter work performed that the checked tide of westward emigration began to flow again, and before the close of 1780 a considerable number of hardy pioneers, some with families and some without, had left the Old Dominion to begin life anew in the Ohio River country. One family that crossed the mountains into the backwoods of Kentucky consisted of a farmer named Abraham Lincoln, with his wife and five children. Their home had been in Rockingham County, to which a previous generation of Lincolns had removed, according to tradition, from among the Quakers of Berks County, Pa. Mr. Lincoln had been a land owner in Virginia, and had now purchased four hundred acres of government land in Jefferson County, Ky., in a neighborhood which was still very likely to be infested, from time to time, by roving warriors and war parties of the Shawnees and other hostile red men. Work began at once, a log cabin was built, a clearing was made, and there seemed a prospect that the Lincoln family, like many another of those then pushing into the wilderness, was on its way to competence. Year after year went by, and there were terrible blows struck by the Indians, from time to time, along the spreading line of settlements. Their strength had not yet been broken, and they grew even more bitterly hostile as they saw their hunting grounds swept from them by the white man's axe and plough. The men who made the clearings were as soldiers of civilization, holding a sort of skirmish line, upon which many of them were sure to fall. Abraham Lincoln's hour came to him in the year 1786. He was at work only a few rods from his own door, and his youngest boy, Thomas, was with him. The older boys, Mordecai and Josiah, were The at work by themselves at a little distance. nearest cover for a creeping enemy was equally near, but there was no thought of danger, and the toilers were all unarmed. The boys heard a rifle shot and saw their father fall dead. They met the sudden and terrible emergency with courage, but the budding prosperity of the Lincoln family had been withered away. Mordecai, the oldest obtained a rifle while Josiah started at once upon a daring errand through the woods to Hughes' Station, the nearest military post, for assistance. Little Thomas, only seven years old, remained in childish fright by the body of his murdered father. son, reached the house and the ambushed Indian was recharging his own before venturing out to secure the coveted scalp trophy. The next shot came from the house, and was aimed at something white upon the breast of the warrior, just as he laid his hands upon little Thomas. It was well directed, and the savage fell dead beside his victim. Other Indians showed themselves, and were skirmished with by Mordecai until Josiah returned with a party of riflemen, but no more were killed. The young marksman himself became a revengeful hunter of Indians, destroying them relentlessly as wild beasts, whenever an opportunity offered. The Jefferson County home was given up for one of greater security, in Washington County. The widow did her best for her three sons and her two daughters, but she could not supply the place of their father, and they grew up without the educational and other advantages which might otherwise have been assured to them. Schools and books were scarce commodities in the backwoods. They were a species of luxury to be enjoyed only by people whose circumstances were exceptionally good. Twenty years later Thomas Lincoln, then about twenty-seven years of age, utterly untaught, was unable to so much as write his own name. In that year, 1806, nevertheless, he was married, on June 12th, to Miss Nancy Hanks, of Beechland, Washington County, Ky. He had been a farm laborer, a hunter, a restless and unsteady but by no means a dissipated character, and at last he had become something of a carpenter. He found his wife while working at what he knew of this trade in the shop of her uncle, Joseph Hanks, in Elizabethtown. After his marriage he attempted to gain a living by working at it, while his young and handsome wife undertook to teach him writing, but both attempts ended in failure. Thomas became able to write his own name and no more, and he gave up carpentering after little more than a year of haphazard effort. The house they lived in at Elizabethtown was a very small and comfortless log cabin, and here, during the first year of wedded life, was born a daughter, who was named Nancy Lincoln, after her mother. Both in personal attractions and in mental capacity Mrs. Lincoln was a woman fitted for a better home than any that her husband was likely to ever give her. He made an effort early in the following year, for he purchased and proposed to pay for a small farm on the Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, about thirteen miles from Elizabethtown and three |