The Life of Abraham Lincoln

EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY.- REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT'S GRANDFATHEr from Virginia to KentUCKY. HE IS KILLED BY THE INDIANS. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE PRESIDENT. HIS FATHER'S MARRIAGE. HIS MOTHER.-THEIR CHILDREN.- Death of HIS MOTHER. HIS EDUCATION.-BOOKS HE READ.- HIS FATHER'S SECOND MARRIAGE.- Woodcraft.— TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS.

HISTORY furnishes the record of few lives at once so eventful and important, and ending so tragically, as that of Abraham Lincoln. Poets and orators, artists and historians, have tried to depict his character and illustrate his career, but the great epic of his life has yet to be written. We are probably too near him in point of time fully to comprehend and appreciate his greatness, and the influence he is to exert upon his country and the world. The storms which marked his tempestuous career have scarcely yet fully subsided, and the shock of his dramatic death is still felt; but as the clouds of dust and smoke which filled the air during his life clear away, his character will stand out in bolder relief and more perfect outline. I write with the hope that I may contribute something which shall aid in forming a just estimate of his character, and a true appreciation of his services.

Abraham Lincoln was born to a very humble station in life, and his early surroundings were rude and rough, but his ancestors for generations had been of that tough fiber, and vigorous physical organization and mental energy, so often found among the pioneers on the frontier of American civilization. His forefathers removed from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, in the first half of the seventeenth century; and from Pennsylvania some members of the family moved to Virginia, and settled in the valley of the Shenandoah, in the county of Rockingham, whence his immediate ancestors came to Kentucky. For several generations they kept on the crest of the wave of Western settlement. The family were English, and came from Norfolk County, England, in about the year 1638, when they settled in Hingham, Massachusetts. Mordecai Lincoln, the English emigrant who thus settled in Massachusetts, removed afterwards to Pennsylvania, and was the great-great-grandfather of the President. His son John, who was the great-grandfather of the President, moved to Virginia, and had a son Abraham, the grandfather of the President. He and his son Thomas moved, in 1782, from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky.' It was in the same year that General George

1. The following statement, of which a fac-simile is now before me, was drawn up by Mr. Lincoln, at the request of J. W. Fell, of Bloomington, Illinois :

I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon Counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or '2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name, ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecal, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the state came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools,so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin', writin', and cipherin’** to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn

Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia, and on the 12th of September, 1782, Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, appointed John Todd commandant of the county of Illinois, then a part of Virginia. These ancestors of the President were rough, hardy, fearless men, and familiar with woodcraft; men who could endure the extremes of fatigue and exposure, who knew how to find food and shelter in the forest; brave, self-reliant, true and faithful to their friends, and dangerous to their enemies.

The grandfather of the President and his son Thomas emigrated to Kentucky in 1781 or 1782, and settled in Mercer county. This grandfather is named in the surveys of Daniel Boone as having purchased of the United States five hundred acres of land.1

A year or two after this settlement in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, having erected a log cabin near "Bear Grass

in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twentyone I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk war, and I was elected a Captain of Volunteers-a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went [through] the campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten-the only time I have ever been beaten by the people. The next, and three succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the Lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hun. dred and eighty pounds: dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and gray eyes. No other marks or bands recollected. Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

1. "Abraham Lincoln enters 500 acres of land on a Treasury warrant on the south side of Licking Creek or River, in Kentucky." See the original Field Book of Daniel Boone, in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Fort," the site of the present city of Louisville, began to open up his farm. Shortly after this, he was one day, while at work in the field, waylaid, shot, and instantly killed, by a party of Indians. Thomas Lincoln, born in 1778, and the father of the President, was in the field with his father when he fell. Mordecai and Josiah, his elder brothers, were near by in the forest. Mordecai, startled by the shot, saw his father fall, and, running to the cabin, seized the loaded rifle, rushed to one of the loop-holes cut through the logs of the cabin, and saw the Indian who had fired; he had just caught the boy, Thomas, and was running towards the forest. Pointing the rifle through the logs, and aiming at a silver medal on the breast of the Indian, Mordecai fired. The Indian fell, and the boy, springing to his feet, ran to the open arms of his mother, at the cabin door. Meanwhile, Josiah, who had run to the fort for aid, returned with a party of settlers, who brought in the body of Abraham Lincoln, and the Indian who had been shot. From this time throughout his life, Mordecai was the mortal enemy of the Indians, and, it is said, sacrificed many in revenge for the murder of his father.

It was in the midst of such scenes that the ancestors of the President were nurtured. They were contemporaries of Daniel Boone, of Simon Kenton, and other border heroes and Indian fighters on the frontiers, and were often engaged in those desperate conflicts between the Indians and the settlers, which gave to Kentucky the suggestive name of "the dark and bloody ground."1

These Kentucky hunters, of which the grandfather and the father of the President are types, were a very remarkable class of men. They were brave, sagacious, and self-reliant, ready in the hour of danger, frank, generous and hospitable. Tough and hardy, with his trusty rifle always in his hands or

1. It is a curious fact that the grandfather of the President should have been a comrade of Daniel Boone in Kentucky, and that the President and a grandson of Boone should have been fellow soldiers in the Black Hawk war; both volunteers from Illinois. See Major Robert Anderson's manuscript sketch of the Black Hawk war (quoted hereafter), in possession of the Chicago Historical Society.

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The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1