you. Come over and pull fodder for me for two days, and we will call our accounts even." The offer was accepted and the engagement literally fulfilled. As a boy, no less than since, Abraham Lincoln had an honor. able conscientiousness, integrity, industry, and an ardent love of knowledge. The town on the Ohio river, nearest his home, was Troy, the capital of Perry county down to the date of its division. This place, at the mouth of Anderson's Creek, had been settled as early as 1811, and was a place of some consequence, both for its river trade and as the county-seat. After this latter advantage was lost, by the formation of a new county in 1818, Troy dwindled away, and is now a place of only about five hundred inhabitants. Rockport, nearly twenty miles south-west of Gentryville, became the capital of Spencer county, and thenceforward a point of interest to the new settlers. It is situated on a high bluff of the Ohio river, and receives its name from "Lady Washington's Rock," a picturesque hanging-rock at that place. At these two points young Lincoln gained some knowledge of the new world of river life and business, in addition to his farm experience, and to his forest sports with rod and rifle. For several months he is said to have been ferryman at Anderson's Creek Ferry. It was during one of the later of these thirteen years, that Abraham, at nineteen, was permitted to gratify his eager longing to see more of the world, and to try the charms of an excursion on the Beautiful River. He had inherited much of the adventurous and stirring disposition of his Virginian grandfather, and was delighted with the prospect of a visit to New Orleans, then the splendid city of Western dreams. He performed this journey on a common flatboat, doing service as one of the hands on that long yet most exhilarating trip. We have no particulars of this his sole excursion as a flatboatman during his Indiana days, yet to his own mind it probably long afforded many not unpleasing recollections. He was undoubt edly the life of the little company, delighting them with his humorous sallies no less than with his muscular superiority, and with his hilarious activity and intuitive tact in all thai immediately concerned their voyage. LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 27 If there had been any forebodings at the time of departure from their first home on Nolin Creek, these were to be ore long realized by the Indiana emigrants. Scarcely two years had passed, in this changed climate, and in these rougher forest experiences, before the mother of young Abraham--perhaps too gentle to encounter the new trials added to those she had before partially surmounted, and to endure the malarious influences in which this wild country abounded--was called to a last separation from those she had so tenderly loved. She died in 1818, leaving as her sole surviving children, a daughter less than twelve years old, and a son two years younger, of whose future distinction, even with a mother's fondness, she probably had but an indefinite hope. A grave was made for her "Where the wind of the West breathes its softest sigh; Where the silvery stream is flowing nigh Where the sun's warm smile may never dispel To mock the heart that is resting below." * A year or two later, Thomas Lincoln contracted a second marriage with Mrs. Johnston, a widow with three children, that were brought up with those of Mr. Lincoln. Besides these step-children, there were no additions to the family as before enumerated. In concluding this brief account of the thirteen important years which were spent by Abraham Lincoln as an Indianian, the per sonal recollections of a distinguished lawyer and statesman of an alder generation, who emigrated to Indiana at nearly the same date, will aid in conveying a correct impression of those times, and of the circumstances with which the youth was surrounded. Indiana, says the late Hon. O. H. Smith,† was born in the year 1816, with some sixty-five thousand inhabitants-only about forty years ago. A few counties only were then organ J. B. Dillon. Early Indiana Trials and Sketches. Reminiscences by Hon. O H. Smith, page 285. ized. The whole middle, north, and north-west portions of the State were an unbroken wilderness, in the possession 01 the Indians. Well do I remember when there were but twe families settled west of the Whitewater Valley-one at Flat Rock, above where Rushville now stands, and the other on Brandywine, near where Greenfield was afterward located. When I first visited the ground on which Indianapolis now stands, the whole country, east to Whitewater and west to the Wabash, was a dense, unbroken forest. There were no public roads, no bridges over any of the streams. The traveler had literally to swim his way. No cultivated farms, no houses to shelter or feed the weary traveler, or his jaded horse. The courts, years afterward, were held in log huts, and the juries sat under the shade of the forest trees. I was Circuit Prosecuting Attorney at the time of the trials at the falls of Fall Creek, where Pendleton now stands. Four of the prisoners were convicted of murder, and three of them hung, for killing Indians. The court was held in a double log cabin, the grand jury sat upon a log in the woods, and the foreman signed the bill of indictment which I had prepared, upon his knee; there was not a petit juror that had shoes on—all wore moccasins, and were belted around the waist, and carried side. knives used by the hunter. The products of the country consisted of peltries, the wild game killed in the forest by the Indian hunters, the fish caught in the interior lakes, rivers and creeks, the pawpaw, wild plum, haws, small berries gathered by the squaws in the woods. The travel was confined to the single horse and his rider, the commerce to the pack-saddle, and the navigation to the Indian canoe. Many a time and oft have I crossed our swollen streams, by day and by night, sometimes swimming my horse, and at others paddling the rude bark canoe of the Indian. Such is a mere sketch of our State when I traversed its wilds, and I am not one of its first settlers." Thus it was that young Lincoln grew up to the verge of manhood; he led no idle or enervating existence. Brought up to the habits of sobriety, and accustomed to steady laoor, no one of all the working-men with whom he came in contact CHAPTER III. FIRST YEARS IN ILLINOIS.-1880-82 The French Settlements.-The North-west.-The Advance of Emigre tion.-Four Great States Founded in the Lifetime of Mr. Lincoln's Father.-North and South Meeting in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.-Sentiments of Southern Emigrants.-The First Emigrations.-A Coincidence of Dates.-Mordecai and Josiah Lincoln.-Removal to Illinois. Settlement on the Sangamon, in Macon County.-The Locality Described.-Abraham Lincoln Engaged in Splitting Rails.-Another Removal of his Father.--He Settles in Coles County.Abraham Lincoln makes Another Trip as a Flatboatman.--Becomes Clerk in a Store on his Return.-Postmaster at New Salem. THE early French settlements of Illinois, at Kaskaskia and Cahokia, had proved as little successful or permanent as those of Indiana around Vincennes. The territory had come into the possession of the British Government just before the Revolution, and emigration from Virginia had commenced almost simultaneously to that quarter and to Kentucky. In 1787, as is well known, the settlements here, in common with those scattered throughout the great expanse of United States territory, north-west of the Ohio river, were brought under a territorial government, as wide in its local scope as it was apparently insignificant in the extent of its population and power. Time speedily demonstrated the error of such an estimate of the remarkable region between the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Lakes, yet, even to this day, the people of the East accept the idea of this greatness and coming power rather as an abstract proposition than as a living reality, deeply affecting their own relative interests and the common resources and grandeur of the country. was a better sample of his class than he. He had now become a Saul among his associates, having reached the hight of nearly six feet and four inches, and with a comparatively slender yet uncommonly strong, muscular frame. He was even then, in his mental and moral characteristics, no less than in his physical proportions, one not to be forgotten or anappreciated by those who knew him. Many reminiscences of those days of his hardy endeavor and rough experience linger in the minds of the plain, earnest people among whom his lot for a long period was thus cast, and will some time be repeated, with such exaggerations or fabulous glosses as are wont gradually to gather, like the sacred halo of the painters, around the memorials of a recognized hero. And a hero, ever hereafter, in the traditions of Southern Indiana, will be the youthful Abraham Lincoln, gigantic and stalwart in his outward form, no less than in the glowing and noble spirit already beginning to foresee and prepare for a high destiny. Wherever he has dwelt becomes classic and consecrated ground, and to have known him, even in his obscurest days, will be deemed a circumstance to be recounted with pride. To gather up such recollections and to perpetuate them with the pen, will be the work of future times and other hands. This period of young Lincoln's life was terminated by another removal of his father, as will appear in the next ohapter |