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, Mordecai, 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

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The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1