CHAPTER III.

LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, AS A RAIL-SPLITTER, A CLERK, AND A VOLUNTEER.

Removal of the Family to Illinois.-Abraham figures as a Rail-Splitter.— As a Hunter,-Another Removal of his Father.-Abraham commences Life on his own Account.-Makes a Trip to New Orleans.-Becomes a Clerk in a Country Store.-Is elected Captain of a Volunteer Company and serves in the Black Hawk War.-Anecdote concerning his temperate Habits. His own humorous Account of his Services in this War. His Character as a Soldier.

PUBLIC attention in the western and southern country now began to be attracted, more decidedly than before, to the vast resources and fertile "bottom lands" of Illinois. This State, organized as a Territory in 1809, and admitted into the Union nine years later, in 1818, had, even as late as 1820, only a population of fifty-five thousand two hundred and eleven; and this was almost exclusively located south of the National Road, which crosses the Kaskaskia river at Vandalia, extending nearly due west to Alton. Notwithstanding the severe labors of opening the forests on the rich western soil, and the long period that must necessarily elapse before the perfect subjugation of the land into cultivated farms, there seems to have been a general avoidance, even to comparatively a late period, of the open prairie, which is now thought to offer such pre-eminent facilities for cultivation, with almost immediate repayment for the toil bestowed. The settlers who had gone into Illinois,

evidently placed a low estimate upon the prairie lands, and always settled on the banks of some stream, on which there was plenty of timber, seeking the forest by preference for their homes. The open character of the country undoubtedly repelled emigration, and caused it. to be concentrated on the chief streams, for a long time, until at last it commenced in earnest.

The earliest waves of this emigration, as in the case of Indiana, came from Virginia and Kentucky, so that the character of its society and legislation was strongly colored by the southern element. While there was still discernible a lurking attachment to the peculiar institutions of the States on the other side of the Ohio river, the general tenor of public sentiment and action was as positive and distinct as were the opinions of the northern settlers of these new commonwealths. Yet the views of slavery at that time prevalent in southern Indiana and Illinois, were not much diverse from those which were entertained in the communities from which these settlers had come. Slavery was regarded as an evil to be rid of; and to make sure of this, those who were not already too much entangled with it, left in large numbers for a region which, by request of Virginia herself, the donor, was "forever" protected from the inroads of this moral and social mischief.

From 1820 to 1830, however, there was a marked extension of settlements northward, toward the centre of the State, and along the Mississippi to Galena, where the mines were beginning to be worked. The rivers along which the principal settlements had been made, aside from the great boundary rivers, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash, were the Kaskaskia, the

Embarras, and the Sangamon, together with their branches. A few settlements, also, had been in the Rock river country, and in the range of Peoria,—and the population thus distributed had now (1830) reached one hundred and fifty-seven thousand four hundred and forty-five.

The brothers of Thomas Lincoln had previously removed to a more northern direction in Indiana than that which he had occupied, both settling in the Blue river country-Mordecai in Hancock county, where he soon after died, and Josiah in Harrison county. Whether their example had its influence upon Thomas, or whether the nomadic spirit which was a part of his character reasserted its sway over him, we do not know; but whatever may have been the cause, immediate or remote, he left Indiana in the spring of 1830, to seek another place of abode in the State of Illinois. In addition to his own family, he was accompanied by those of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his second wife. The journey, which occupied fifteen days, was accomplished by ox-teams. Abraham at this time was twentyone years of age.

Mr. Lincoln "had seen the growth of Kentucky from almost the very start to a population of nearly seven hundred thousand, and he had lived in Indiana from the time its inhabitants numbered only sixty-five thousand until they had reached nearly three hundred and fifty thousand. As he first set his foot within the limits of Illinois, its vast territory had comparatively but just begun to be occupied-scarcely at all, as we have `seen, except in the extreme southern portion, and here almost exclusively along the principal streams. In a country

so poorly supplied with wood and water as Illinois, such sites would naturally be the first to be taken up, and, with a prairie addition, suited the tastes even of those to whom the level open country was forbidding in ap

pearance.

"Mr. Lincoln pushed forward to the central part of the State where such locations were still abundant. A more beautiful country than that of the Sangamon valley could not easily have been anywhere discovered by an explorer. It was not strange that the report of such lands, if he heard it in his southern Indiana home, should have attracted even so far one who was bred to pioneer life and inherited a migratory disposition. He first settled on the Sangamon 'bottom, in Macon .county.

"Passing over the Illinois Central railroad, as you approach Decatur, the county-seat of Macon, from the south, a slightly-broken country is reached two or three miles from that place, and presently the North Fork of the Sangamon, over which you pass, a mile from the town. This stream flows westwardly, uniting with the South Fork, near Jamestown, ten miles from Springfield. Following down this North Fork for a distance of about ten miles from Decatur, you come to the immediate vicinity of the first residence of Abraham Lincoln (with his father's family) in Illinois."

During the first season of their abode in the new State Abraham continued to help his father in the farm work; and one of the first duties which presented itself was the necessity of fencing a field on the rich bottom-lands which had been selected for cultivation. For this purpose, with the help of one laborer, Abraham Lincoln at