CHAPTER II.

It has pleased some of Mr. Lincoln's biographers to represent this removal of his father as a flight from the taint of slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth. There were not at the time more than fifty slaves in all Hardin County, which then composed a vast area of territory. It was practically a free community. Lincoln's more fortunate relatives in other parts of the State were slaveholders; and there is not the slightest evidence that he ever disclosed any conscientious scruples concerning the "institution."

The lives of his father and mother, and the history and character of the family before their settlement in Indiana, were topics upon which Mr. Lincoln never spoke but with great reluctance and significant reserve.

In his family Bible he kept a register of births, marriages, and deaths, every entry being carefully made in his own handwriting. It contains the date of his sister's birth and his own; of the marriage and death of his sister; of the death of his mother; and of the birth and death of Thomas Lincoln. The rest of the record is almost wholly devoted to the Johnstons and their numerous descendants and connections. It has not a word about the Hankses or the Sparrows. It shows the marriage of Sally Bush, first with Daniel Johnston, and then with Thomas Lincoln; but it is entirely silent as to the marriage of his own mother. It does not even give the date of her birth, but barely recognizes her existence and demise, to make the vacancy which was speedily filled by Sarah Johnston.1

1 The leaf of the Bible which contains these entries is in the possession of Col. Chapman.

An artist was painting his portrait, and asked him for a sketch of his early life. He gave him this brief memorandum: "I was born Feb. 12,1809, in the then Hardin County, Kentucky, at a point within the now county of La Rue, a mile or a mile and a half from where Hodgens Mill now is. My parents being dead, and my own memory not serving, I know of no means of identifying the precise locality. It was on Nolin Creek."

To the compiler of the "Dictionary of Congress" he gave the following: "Born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. Education defective. Profession, a lawyer. Have been a captain of volunteers in the Black-Hawk War. Postmaster at a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature, and was a member of the Lower House of Congress."

To a campaign biographer who applied for particulars of his early history, he replied that they could be of no interest; that they were but

"The short and simple annals of the poor."

"The chief difficulty I had to encounter," writes this latter gentleman, "was to induce him to communicate the homely facts and incidents of his early life. He seemed to be painfully impressed with the extreme poverty of his early surroundings, the utter absence of all romantic and heroic elements; and I know he thought poorly of the idea of attempting a biographical sketch for campaign purposes.... Mr. Lincoln communicated some facts to me about his ancestry, which he did not wish published, and which I have never spoken of or alluded to before. I do not think, however, that Dennis Hanks, if he knows any thing about these matters, would be very likely to say any thing about them."

THOMAS LINCOLN was something of a waterman. In the frequent changes of occupation, which had hitherto made his life so barren of good results, he could not resist the temptation to the career of a flat-boatman. He had accordingly made one, or perhaps two trips to New Orleans, in the company and employment of Isaac Bush, who was probably a near relative of Sally Bush. It was therefore very natural, that when, in the fall of 1816, he finally determined to emigrate, he should attempt to transport his goods by water. He built himself a boat, which seems to have been none of the best, and launched it on the Rolling Fork, at the mouth of Knob Creek, a half-mile from his cabin. Some of his personal property, including carpenter's tools, he put on board, and the rest he traded for four hundred gallons of whiskey. With this crazy boat and this singular cargo, he put out into the stream alone, and floating with the current down the Rolling Fork, and then down Salt River, reached the Ohio without any mishap. Here his craft proved somewhat rickety when contending with the difficulties of the larger stream, or perhaps there was a lack of force in the management of her, or perhaps the single navigator had consoled himself during the lonely voyage by too frequent applications to a portion of his cargo: at all events, the boat capsized, and the lading went to the bottom. He fished up a few of the tools "and most of the whiskey," and, righting the little boat, again floated down to a landing at Thompson's Ferry, two and a half miles west of Troy, in Perry County, Indiana. Here he sold his treacherous boat, and, leaving his remaining property in the care of a settler named Posey, trudged off on foot to select "a location" in the wilderness. He did not go far, but found a place that he thought would suit him only sixteen miles distant from the river. He then turned about, and walked all the way back to Knob Creek, in Kentucky, where he took a fresh start with his wife and her children. Of the latter there were only two,—Nancy (or Sarah), nine years of age, and Abraham, seven. Mrs. Lincoln had given birth to another son some years before, but he had died when only three days old. After leaving Kentucky, she had no more children.

This time Lincoln loaded what little he had left upon two horses, and "packed through to Posey's." Besides clothing and bedding, they carried such cooking utensils as would be needed by the way, and would be indispensable when they reached their destination. The stock was not large. It consisted of "one oven and lid, one skillet and lid, and some tin-ware." They camped out during the nights, and of course cooked their own food. Lincoln's skill as a hunter must now have stood him in good stead.

Where he got the horses used upon this occasion, it is impossible to say; but they were likely borrowed from his brother-in-law, Krume, of Breckinridge County, who owned such stock, and subsequently moved Sarah Johnston's goods to Indiana, after her marriage with Lincoln.

When they got to Posey's, Lincoln hired a wagon, and, loading on it the whiskey and other things he had stored there, went on toward the place which has since become famous as the "Lincoln Farm." He was now making his way through an almost untrodden wilderness. There was no road, and for a part of the distance not even a foot-trail. He was slightly assisted by a path of a few miles in length, which had been "blazed out" by an earlier settler named Hoskins. But he was obliged to suffer long delays, and cut out a passage for the wagon with his axe. At length, after many detentions and difficulties he reached the point where he intended to make his future home. It was situated between the forks of Big Pigeon and Little Pigeon Creeks, a mile and a half east of Gentryville, a village which grew up afterwards, and now numbers about three hundred inhabitants. The whole country was covered with a dense forest of oaks, beeches, walnuts, sugar-maples, and nearly all the varieties of trees that flourish in North America. The woods were usually open, and devoid of underbrush; the trees were of the largest growth, and beneath the deep shades they afforded was spread out a rich greensward. The natural grazing was very good, and hogs found abundant sustenance in the prodigious quantity of mast. There was occasionally a little glade or prairie set down in the midst of this vast expanse of forest. One of these, not far from the Lincoln place, was a famous resort for the deer, and the hunters knew it well for its numerous "licks." Upon this prairie the militia "musters" were had at a later day, and from it the south fork of the Pigeon came finally to be known as the "Prairie Fork."

Lincoln laid off his curtilage on a gentle hillock having a slope on every side. The spot was very beautiful, and the soil was excellent. The selection was wise in every respect but one. There was no water near, except what was collected in holes in the ground after a rain; but it was very foul, and had to be strained before using. At a later period we find Abraham and his step-sister carrying water from a spring situated a mile away. Dennis Hanks asserts that Tom Lincoln "riddled his land like a honeycomb," in search of good water, and was at last sorely tempted to employ a Yankee, who came around with a divining-rod, and declared that for the small consideration of five dollars in cash, he would make his rod point to a cool, flowing spring beneath the surface.

Here Lincoln built "a half-faced camp,"—a cabin enclosed on three sides and open on the fourth. It was built, not of logs, but of poles, and was therefore denominated a "camp," to distinguish it from a "cabin." It was about fourteen feet square, and had no floor. It was no larger than the first house he lived in at Elizabethtown, and on the whole not as good a shelter. But Lincoln was now under the influence of a transient access of ambition, and the camp was merely preliminary to something better. He lived in it, however, for a whole year, before he attained to the dignity of a residence in a cabin. "In the mean time he cleaned some land, and raised a small crop of corn and vegetables."

In the fall of 1817, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came out from Kentucky, and took up their abode in the old camp which the Lincolns had just deserted for the cabin. Betsy was the aunt who had raised Nancy Hanks. She had done the same in part for our friend Dennis Hanks, who was the offspring of another sister, and she now brought him with her. Dennis thus became the constant companion of young Abraham; and all the other members of that family, as originally settled in Indiana, being dead, Dennis remains a most important witness as to this period of Mr. Lincoln's life.

Lincoln's second house was a "rough, rough log" one: the timbers were not hewed; and until after the arrival of Sally Bush, in 1819, it had neither floor, door, nor window. It stood about forty yards from what Dennis Hanks calls that "darned little half-faced camp," which was now the dwelling of the Sparrows. It was "right in the bush,"—in the heart of a virgin wilderness. There were only seven or eight older settlers in the neighborhood of the two Pigeon Creeks. Lincoln had had some previous acquaintance with one of them,—a Mr. Thomas Carter; and it is highly probable that nothing but this trivial circumstance induced him to settle here.1

1 The principal authorities for this part of our narrative are necessarily Dennis and John Hanks; but their statements have been carefully collated with those of other persons, both in Kentucky and Indiana.

The nearest town was Troy, situated on the Ohio, about half a mile from the mouth of Anderson Creek. Gentryville had as yet no existence. Travelling was on horseback or on foot, and the only resort of commerce was to the pack-horse or the canoe. But a prodigious immigration was now sweeping into this inviting country. Harrison's victories over the Indians had opened it up to the peaceful settler; and Indiana was admitted into the Union in 1816, with a population of sixty-five thousand. The county in which Thomas Lincoln settled was Perry, with the county-seat at Troy; but he soon found himself in the new county of Spencer, with the court-house at Rockport, twenty miles south of him, and the thriving village of Gentryville within a mile and a half of his door.

A post-office was established at Gentryville in 1824 or 1825. Dennis Hanks helped to hew the logs used to build the first storeroom. The following letter from Mr. David Turnham, now of Dale, Spencer County, presents some interesting and perfectly authentic information regarding the village and the settlements around it in those early times:—

"Yours of the 5th inst. is at hand. As you wish me to answer several questions, I will give you a few items of the early settlement of Indiana.

"When my father came here in the spring of 1819, he settled in Spencer County, within one mile of Thomas Lincoln, then a widower. The chance for schooling was poor; but, such as it was, Abraham and myself attended the same schools.

"We first had to go seven miles to mill; and then it was a hand-mill that would grind from ten to fifteen bushels of corn in a day. There was but little wheat grown at that time; and, when we did have wheat, we had to grind it on the mill described, and use it without bolting, as there were no bolts in the country. In the course of two or three years, a man by the name of Huffman built a mill on Anderson River, about twelve miles distant. Abe and I had to do the milling on horseback, frequently going twice to get one grist. Then they began building horse-mills of a little better quality than the hand-mills.

"The country was very rough, especially in the low lands, so thick with bush that a man could scarcely get through on foot. These places were called Roughs. The country abounded in game, such as bears, deer, turkeys, and the smaller game.

"About the time Huffman built his mill, there was a road laid out from Corydon to Evansville, running by Mr. Lincoln's farm, and through what is now Gentryville. Corydon was then the State capital.

"About the year 1823, there was another road laid out from Rockport to Bloomington, crossing the aforesaid at right angles, where Gentryville now stands. James Gentry entered the land; and in about a year Gideon Romine brought goods there, and shortly after succeeded in getting a post-office, by the name of Gentryville Post-office. Then followed the laying out of lots, and the selling of them, and a few were improved. But for some cause the lots all fell back to the original owner. The lots were sold in 1824 or 1825. Romine kept goods there a short time, and sold out to Gentry, but the place kept on increasing slowly. William Jones came in with a store, that made it improve a little faster, but Gentry bought him out. Jones bought a tract of land one-half mile from Gentryville, moved to it, went into business there, and drew nearly all the custom. Gentry saw that it was ruining his town: he compromised with Jones, and got him back to Gentryville; and about the year 1847 or 1848 there was another survey of lots, which remains.

"This is as good a history of the rise of Gentryville as I can give, after consulting several of the old settlers.

"At that time there were a great many deer-licks; and Abe and myself would go to those licks sometimes, and watch of nights to kill deer, though Abe was not so fond of a gun as I was. There were ten or twelve of these licks in a small prairie on the creek, lying between Mr. Lincoln's and Mr. Wood's (the man you call Moore). This gave it the name of Prairie Fork of Pigeon Creek.

"The people in the first settling of this country were very sociable, kind, and accommodating; but there was more drunkenness and stealing on a small scale, more immorality, less religion, less well-placed confidence."

The steps taken by Lincoln to complete his title to the land upon which he settled are thus recited by the Commissioner of the General Land Office:—

"In reply to the letter of Mr. W. H. Herndon, who is writing the biography of the late President, dated June 19, 1865, herewith returned, I have the honor to state, pursuant to the Secretary's reference, that on the 15th of October, 1817, Mr. Thomas Lincoln, then of Perry County, Indiana, entered under the old credit system,—

"1. The South-West Quarter of Section 82, in Township 4, South of Range 5 West, lying in Spencer County, Indiana.

"2. Afterwards the said Thomas Lincoln relinquished to the United States the East half of said South-West Quarter; and the amount paid thereon was passed to his credit to complete payment of the West half of said South-West Quarter of Section 32, in Township 4, South of Range 5 West; and accordingly a patent was issued to said Thomas Lincoln for the latter tract. The patent was dated June 6, 1827, and was signed by John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, and countersigned by George Graham, then Commissioner of the General Land Office." 1

1 The patent was issued to Thomas Lincoln alias Linckhern the other half he never paid, and finally lost the whole of the land.

It will be observed, that, although Lincoln squatted upon the land in the fall of 1816, he did not enter it until October of the next year; and that the patent was not issued to him until June, 1827, but a little more than a year before he left it altogether. Beginning by entering a full quarter section, he was afterwards content with eighty acres, and took eleven years to make the necessary payments upon that. It is very probable that the money which finally secured the patent was furnished by Gentry or Aaron Grigsby, and the title passed out of Lincoln in the course of the transaction. Dennis Hanks says, "He settled on a piece of government land,—eighty acres. This land he afterwards bought under the Two-Dollar Act; was to pay for it in instalments; one-half he paid."

For two years Lincoln continued to live along in the old way. He did not like to farm, and he never got much of his land under cultivation. His principal crop was corn; and this, with the game which a rifleman so expert would easily take from the woods around him, supplied his table. It does not appear that he employed any of his mechanical skill in completing and furnishing his own cabin. It has already been stated that the latter had no window, door, or floor. But the furniture—if it may be called furniture—was even worse than the house. Three-legged stools served for chairs. A bedstead was made of poles stuck in the cracks of the logs in one corner of the cabin, while the other end rested in the crotch of a forked stick sunk in the earthen floor. On these were laid some boards, and on the boards a "shake-down" of leaves covered with skins and old petticoats. The table was a hewed puncheon, supported by four legs. They had a few pewter and tin dishes to eat from, but the most minute inventory of their effects makes no mention of knives or forks. Their cooking utensils were a Dutch oven and a skillet. Abraham slept in the loft, to which he ascended by means of pins driven into holes in the wall.

In the summer of 1818, the Pigeon-Creek settlements were visited by a fearful disease, called, in common parlance, "the milk-sickness." It swept off the cattle which gave the milk, as well as the human beings who drank it. It seems to have prevailed in the neighborhood from 1818 to 1829; for it is given as one of the reasons for Thomas Lincoln's removal to Illinois at the latter date. But in the year first mentioned its ravages were especially awful. Its most immediate effects were severe retchings and vomitings; and, while the deaths from it were not necessarily sudden, the proportion of those who finally died was uncommonly large.1 Among the number who were attacked by it, and lingered on for some time in the midst of great sufferings, were Thomas and Betsy Sparrow and Mrs. Nancy Lincoln.

1 The peculiar disease which carried off so many of Abraham's family, and induced the removal of the remainder to Illinois, deserves more than a passing allusion. The following, regarding its nature and treatment, is from the pen of an eminent physician of Danville, Illinois:— Ward H. Lamon, Esq. Dear Sir,—Your favor of the 17th inst. has been received. You request me to present you with my theory in relation to the origin of the disease called "milk-sickness," and also a "general statement of the best treatment of the disease," and the proportion of fatal cases. I have quite a number of cases of the so-called disease in Danville, Ill., and its vicinity; but perhaps you are not aware, that, between the great majority of the medical faculty in this region of country and myself, there is quite a discrepancy of opinion. They believe in the existence of the disease in Vermilion County; while, on the contrary, I am firmly of opinion, that, instead of genuine milk- sickness, it is only a modified form of malarial fever with which we here have to contend. Though sceptical of its existence in this part of the country, we have too much evidence from different intelligent sources to doubt, for a moment, that, in many parts of the West and South-west, there is a distinct malady, witnessed more than fifty years ago, and different from every other heretofore recognized in any system of Nosology. In the opinion of medical men, as well as in that of the people in general, where milk-sickness prevails, cattle, sheep, and horses contract the disease by feeding on wild pasture-lands; and, when those pastures have been enclosed and cultivated, the cause entirely disappears. This has also been the observation of the farmers and physicians of Vermilion County, Illinois. From this it might be inferred that the disease had a vegetable origin. But it appears that it prevails as early in the season as March and April in some localities; and I am informed that, in an early day, say thirty-five or forty years ago, it showed itself in the winter-time in this county. This seems to argue that it may be produced by water holding some mineral substance in solution. Even in this case, however, some vegetable producing the disease may have been gathered and preserved with the hay on which the cattle were fed at the time; for in that early day the farmers were in the habit of cutting wild grass for their stock. On the whole, I am inclined to attribute the cause to a vegetable origin. The symptoms of what is called milk-sickness in this county— and they are similar to those described by authors who have written on the disease in other sections of the Western country—are a whitish coat on the tongue, burning sensation of the stomach severe vomiting, obstinate constipation of the bowels, coolness of the extremities, great restlessness and jactitation, pulse rather small, somewhat more frequent than natural, and slightly corded. In the course of the disease, the coat on the tongue becomes brownish and dark, the countenance dejected, and the prostration of the patient is great. A fatal termination may take place in sixty hours, or life may be prolonged for a period of fourteen days. These are the symptoms of the acute form of the disease. Sometimes it runs into the chronic form, or it may assume that form from the commencement; and, after months or years, the patient may finally die, or recover only a partial degree of health. The treatment which I have found most successful is pills composed of calomel and opium, given at intervals of two, three, or four hours, so as to bring the patient pretty strongly under the influence of opium by the time the second or third dose had been administered; some effervescing mixture, pro re nata; injections; castor oil, when the stomach will retain it; blisters to the stomach; brandy or good whiskey freely administered throughout the disease; and quinine after the bowels have been moved. Under the above treatment, modified according to the circumstances, I would not expect to lose more than one case in eight or ten, as the disease manifests itself in this county.... As ever, Theo. Lemon.

It was now found expedient to remove the Sparrows from the wretched "half-faced camp," through which the cold autumn winds could sweep almost unobstructed, to the cabin of the Lincolns, which in truth was then very little better. Many in the neighborhood had already died, and Thomas Lincoln had made all their coffins out of "green lumber cut with a whip-saw." In the mean time the Sparrows and Nancy were growing alarmingly worse. There was no physician in the county,—not even a pretender to the science of medicine; and the nearest regular practitioner was located at Yellow Banks, Ky., over thirty miles distant. It is not probable that they ever secured his services. They would have been too costly, and none of the persons who witnessed and describe these scenes speak of his having been there. At length, in the first days of October, the Sparrows died; and Thomas Lincoln sawed up his green lumber, and made rough boxes to enclose the mortal remains of his wife's two best and oldest friends. A day or two after, on the 5th of October, 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln rested from her troubles. Thomas Lincoln took to his green wood again, and made a box for Nancy. There were about twenty persons at her funeral. They took her to the summit of a deeply-wooded knoll, about half a mile south-east of the cabin, and laid her beside the Sparrows. If there were any burial ceremonies, they were of the briefest. But it happened that a few months later an itinerant preacher, named David Elkin, whom the Lincolns had known in Kentucky, wandered into the settlement; and he either volunteered or was employed to preach a sermon, which should commemorate the many virtues and pass in silence the few frailties of the poor woman who slept in the forest. Many years later the bodies of Levi Hall and his wife, Nancy Hanks, were deposited in the same earth with that of Mrs. Lincoln. The graves of two or three children belonging to a neighbor's family are also near theirs. They are all crumbled in, sunken, and covered with wild vines in deep and tangled mats. The great trees were originally cut away to make a small cleared space for this primitive graveyard; but the young dogwoods have sprung up unopposed in great luxuriance, and in many instances the names of pilgrims to the burial-place of the great Abraham Lincoln's mother are carved in their bark. With this exception, the spot is wholly unmarked. Her grave never had a stone, nor even a board, at its head or its foot; and the neighbors still dispute as to which one of those unsightly hollows contains the ashes of Nancy Lincoln.

Thirteen months after the burial of Nancy Hanks, and nine or ten months after the solemnities conducted by Elkin, Thomas Lincoln appeared at Elizabethtown, Ky., in search of another wife. Sally Bush had married Johnston, the jailer, in the spring of the same year in which Lincoln had married Nancy Hanks. She had then rejected him for a better match, but was now a widow. In 1814 many persons in and about Elizabethtown had died of a disease which the people called the "cold plague," and among them the jailer. Both parties being free again, Lincoln came back, very unexpectedly to Mrs. Johnston, and opened his suit in an exceedingly abrupt manner. "Well, Miss Johnston," said he, "I have no wife, and you have no husband. I came a purpose to marry you: I knowed you from a gal, and you knowed me from a boy. I have no time to lose; and, if you are willin', let it be done straight off." To this she replied, "Tommy, I know you well, and have no objection to marrying you; but I cannot do it straight off, as I owe some debts that must first be paid." "The next morning," says Hon. Samuel Haycraft, the clerk of the courts and the gentleman who reports this quaint courtship, "I issued his license, and they were marriedstraightoff on that day, and left, and I never saw her or Tom Lincoln since." From the death of her husband to that day, she had been living, "an honest, poor widow," "in a round log-cabin," which stood in an "alley" just below Mr. Haycraft's house. Dennis Hanks says that it was only "on the earnest solicitation of her friends" that Mrs. Johnston consented to marry Lincoln. They all liked Lincoln, and it was with a member of her family that he had made several voyages to New Orleans. Mr. Helm, who at that time was doing business in his uncle's store at Elizabethtown, remarks that "life among the Hankses, the Lincolns, and the Enlows was a long ways below life among the Bushes." Sally was the best and the proudest of the Bushes; but, nevertheless, she appears to have maintained some intercourse with the Lincolns as long as they remained in Kentucky. She had a particular kindness for little Abe, and had him with her on several occasions at Helm's store, where, strange to say, he sat on a nail-keg, and ate a lump of sugar, "just like any other boy."

Mrs. Johnston has been denominated a "poor widow;" but she possessed goods, which, in the eyes of Tom Lincoln, were of almost unparalleled magnificence. Among other things, she had a bureau that cost forty dollars; and he informed her, on their arrival in Indiana, that, in his deliberate opinion, it was little less than sinful to be the owner of such a thing. He demanded that she should turn it into cash, which she positively refused to do. She had quite a lot of other articles, however, which he thought well enough in their way, and some of which were sadly needed in his miserable cabin in the wilds of Indiana. Dennis Hanks speaks with great rapture of the "large supply of household goods" which she brought out with her. There was "one fine bureau, one table, one set of chairs, one large clothes-chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bedding, and other articles." It was a glorious day for little Abe and Sarah and Dennis when this wondrous collection of rich furniture arrived in the Pigeon Creek settlement. But all this wealth required extraordinary means of transportation; and Lincoln had recourse to his brother-in-law, Ralph Krume, who lived just over the line, in Breckinridge County. Krume came with a four-horse team, and moved Mrs. Johnston, now Mrs. Lincoln, with her family and effects, to the home of her new husband in Indiana. When she got there, Mrs. Lincoln was much "surprised" at the contrast between the glowing representations which her husband had made to her before leaving Kentucky and the real poverty and meanness of the place. She had evidently been given to understand that the bridegroom had reformed his old Kentucky ways, and was now an industrious and prosperous farmer. She was scarcely able to restrain the expression of her astonishment and discontent; but, though sadly overreached in a bad bargain, her lofty pride and her high sense of Christian duty saved her from hopeless and useless repinings.

On the contrary, she set about mending what was amiss with all her strength and energy. Her own goods furnished the cabin with tolerable decency. She made Lincoln put down a floor, and hang windows and doors. It was in the depth of winter; and the children, as they nestled in the warm beds she provided them, enjoying the strange luxury of security from the cold winds of December, must have thanked her from the bottoms of their newly-comforted hearts. She had brought a son and two daughters of her own,—John, Sarah, and Matilda; but Abe and his sister Nancy (whose name was speedily changed to Sarah), the ragged and hapless little strangers to her blood, were given an equal place in her affections. They were half naked, and she clad them from the stores of clothing she had laid up for her own. They were dirty, and she washed them; they had been ill-used, and she treated them with motherly tenderness. In her own modest language, she "made them look a little more human." "In fact," says Dennis Hanks, "in a few weeks all had changed; and where every thing was wanting, now all was snug and comfortable. She was a woman of great energy of remarkable good sense, very industrious and saving, and also very neat and tidy in her person and manners, and knew exactly how to manage children. She took an especial liking to young Abe. Her love for him was warmly returned, and continued to the day of his death. But few children loved their parents as he loved his step-mother. She soon dressed him up in entire new clothes,and from that time on he appeared to lead a new life. He was encouraged by her to study, and any wish on his part was gratified when it could be done. The two sets of children got along finely together, as if they had all been the children of the same parents. Mrs. Lincoln soon discovered that young Abe was a boy of uncommon natural talents, and that, if rightly trained, a bright future was before him, and she did all in her power to develop those talents." When, in after years, Mr. Lincoln spoke of his "saintly mother," and of his "angel of a mother," he referred to this noble woman,1 who first made him feel "like a human being,"—whose goodness first touched his childish heart, and taught him that blows and taunts and degradation were not to be his only portion in the world.2

1 The author has many times heard him make the application. While he seldom, if ever, spoke of his own mother, he loved to dwell on the beautiful character of Sally Bush. 2 The following description of her personal appearance is from the pen of her granddaughter, the daughter of Dennis Hanks:— "When I landed in Indiana," says Mrs. Lincoln, "Abe was about nine years old, and the country was wild and desolate. It is certain enough that her presence took away much that was desolate in his lot. She clothed him decently, and had him sent to school as soon as there was a school to send him to. But, notwithstanding her determination to do the best for him, his advantages in this respect were very limited. He had already had a few days', or perhaps a few weeks' experience, under the discipline of Riney and Hazel, in Kentucky; and, as he was naturally quick in the acquisition of any sort of knowledge, it is likely that by this time he could read and write a little. He was now to have the benefit of a few months more of public instruction; but the poverty of the family, and the necessity for his being made to work at home in the shop and on the farm, or abroad as a hired boy, made his attendance at school, for any great length of time, a thing impossible. Accordingly, all his school-days added together would not make a single year in the aggregate. "His wife, my grandmother, is a very tall woman; straight as an Indian, fair complexion, and was, when I first remember her, very handsome, sprightly, talkative, and proud; wore her hair curled till gray; is kind-hearted and very charitable, and also very industrious."—Mrs. H. A, Chapman.

Abraham began his irregular attendance at the nearest school very soon after he fell under the care of the second Mrs. Lincoln. It was probably in the winter of 1819, she having come out in the December of that year. It has been seen that she was as much impressed by his mental precocity as by the good qualities of his heart.

Hazel Dorsey was his first master.1 He presided in a small house near the Little Pigeon Creek meeting-house, a mile and a half from the Lincoln cabin. It was built of unhewn logs, and had "holes for windows," in which "greased paper" served for glass. The roof was just high enough for a man to stand erect. Here he was taught reading, writing, and ciphering. They spelled in classes, and "trapped" up and down. These juvenile contests were very exciting to the participants; and it is said by the survivors, that Abe was even then the equal, if not the superior, of any scholar in his class.

1 The account of the schools is taken from the Grigsbys, Turnham, and others, who attended them along with Abe, as well as from the members of his own family.

The next teacher was Andrew Crawford. Mrs. Gentry says he began pedagogue in the neighborhood in the winter of 1822-3, whilst most of his other scholars are unable to fix an exact date. He "kept" in the same little schoolhouse which had been the scene of Dorsey's labors, and the windows were still adorned with the greased leaves of old copybooks that had come down from Dorsey's time. Abe was now in his fifteenth year, and began to exhibit symptoms of gallantry toward the weaker sex, as we shall presently discover. He was growing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full height of six feet four inches. He was long, wiry, and strong; while his big feet and hands, and the length of his legs and arms, were out of all proportion to his small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy, and Mrs. Gentry says that his skin was shrivelled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt, and a cap made of the skin of an opossum or a coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs, but failed by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes. Twelve inches remained uncovered, and exposed that much of "shinbone, sharp, blue, and narrow."1 "He would always come to school thus, good-humoredly and laughing," says his old friend, Nat Grigsby. "He was always in good health, never was sick, had an excellent constitution, and took care of it."

1 "They had no woollen clothing in the family until about the year 1824."—Dennis Hanks.

Crawford taught "manners." This was a feature of backwoods education to which Dorsey had not aspired, and Crawford had doubtless introduced it as a refinement which would put to shame the humbler efforts of his predecessor. One of the scholars was required to retire, and re-enter as a polite gentleman is supposed to enter a drawing-room. He was received at the door by another scholar, and conducted from bench to bench, until he had been introduced to all the "young ladies and gentlemen" in the room. Abe went through the ordeal countless times. If he took a serious view of the business, it must have put him to exquisite torture; for he was conscious that he was not a perfect type of manly beauty, with his long legs and blue shins, his small head, his great ears, and shrivelled skin. If, however, it struck him as at all funny, it must have filled him with unspeakable mirth, and given rise to many antic tricks and sly jokes, as he was gravely led about, shamefaced and gawky, under the very eye of the precise Crawford, to be introduced to the boys and girls of his most ancient acquaintance.

But, though Crawford inculcated manners, he by no means neglected spelling. Abe was a good speller, and liked to use his knowledge, not only to secure honors for himself, but to help his less fortunate schoolmates out of their troubles, and he was exceedingly ingenious in the selection of expedients for conveying prohibited hints. One day Crawford gave out the difficult worddefied. A large class was on the floor, but they all provokingly failed to spell it. D-e-f-i-d-e, said one; d-e-f-y-d-e, said another; d-e-f-y-d,—d-e-f-y-e-d, cried another and another. But it was all wrong: it was shameful, that, among all these big boys and girls, nobody could spell "defied;" Crawford's wrath gathered in clouds over his terrible brow. He made the helpless culprits shake with fear. He declared he would keep the whole class in all day and all night, if "defied" was not spelled. There was among them a Miss Roby, a girl fifteen years of age, whom we must suppose to have been pretty, for Abe was evidently half in love with her. "I saw Lincoln at the window," says she: "he had his finger in hiseye, and a smile on his face; I instantly took the hint, that I must change the letteryinto ani. Hence I spelled the word,—the class let out. I felt grateful to Lincoln for this simple thing."

Nat Grigsby tells us, with unnecessary particularity, that "essays and poetry were not taught in this school." "Abe took it (them) up on his own account." He first wrote short sentences against "cruelty to animals," and at last came forward with a regular "composition" on the subject. He was very much annoyed and pained by the conduct of the boys, who were in the habit of catching terrapins, and putting coals of fire on their backs. "He would chide us," says Nat, "tell us it was wrong, and would write against it."

The third and last school to which Abe went was taught by a Mr. Swaney, in 1826. To get there, he had to travel four and a half miles; and this going back and forth so great a distance occupied entirely too much of his time. His attendance was therefore only at odd times, and was speedily broken off altogether. The schoolhouse was much like the other one near the Pigeon Creek meeting-house, except that it had two chimneys instead of one. The course of instruction was precisely the same as under Dorsey and Crawford, save that Swaney, like Dorsey, omitted the great department of "manners." "Here," says John Hoskins, the son of the settler who had "blazed out" the trail for Tom Lincoln, "we would choose up, and spell as in old times every Friday night." Hoskins himself tore down "the old schoolhouse" long since, and built a stable with the logs. He is now half sorry for his haste, and reverently presented Mr. Herndon a piece of the wood as a precious memento of his old friend Abe. An oak-tree, blackened and killed by the smoke that issued from the two chimneys, spreads its naked arms over the spot where the schoolhouse stood. Among its roots is a fine, large spring, over whose limpid waters Abe often bent to drink, and laughed at the reflection of his own homely face.

Abe never went to school again in Indiana or elsewhere. Mr. Turnham tells us, that he had excelled all his masters, and it was "no use" for him to attempt to learn any thing from them. But he continued his studies at home, or wherever he was hired out to work, with a perseverance which showed that he could scarcely live without some species of mental excitement. He was by no means fond of the hard manual labor to which his own necessities and those of his family compelled him. Many of his acquaintances state this fact with strong emphasis,—among them Dennis Hanks and Mrs. Lincoln. His neighbor, John Romine, declares that Abe was "awful lazy. He worked for me; was always reading and thinking; used to get mad at him. He worked for me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy: he would laugh and talk and crack jokes and tell stories all the time; didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay. He worked for me frequently, a few days only at a time.... Lincoln said to me one day, that his father taught him to work, but never learned him to love it."

1 Whenever Mrs. Sarah Lincoln speaks, we follow her implicitly. Regarding Abe's habits and conduct at home, her statement is a very full one. It is, however, confirmed and supplemented by all the other members of the family who were alive in 1866.

Abe loved to lie under a shade-tree, or up in the loft of the cabin, and read, cipher, and scribble. At night he sat by the chimney "jamb," and ciphered, by the light of the fire, on the wooden fire-shovel. When the shovel was fairly covered, he would shave it off with Tom Lincoln's drawing-knife, and begin again. In the daytime he used boards for the same purpose, out of doors, and went through the shaving process everlastingly. His step-mother1 repeats often, that "he read every book he could lay his hand on." She says, "Abe read diligently.... He read every book he could lay his hands on; and, when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards if he had no paper, and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he would re-write it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrapbook, in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them."

John Hanks came out from Kentucky when Abe was fourteen years of age, and lived four years with the Lincolns. We cannot describe some of Abe's habits better than John has described them for us: "When Lincoln—Abe and I—returned to the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread, take down a book, sit down on a chair, cock his legs up high as his head, and read. He and I worked barefooted, grubbed it, ploughed, mowed, and cradled together; ploughed corn, gathered it, and shucked corn. Abraham read constantly when he had an opportunity."

Among the books upon which Abe "laid his hands" were "Æsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," a "History of the United States," and Weems's "Life of Washington." All these he read many times, and transferred extracts from them to the boards and the scrapbook. He had procured the scrap-book because most of his literature was borrowed, and he thought it profitable to take copious notes from the books before he returned them. David Turnham had bought a volume of "The Revised Statutes of Indiana;" but, as he was "acting constable" at the time, he could not lend it to Abe. But Abe was not to be baffled in his purpose of going through and through every book in the neighborhood; and so, says Mr. Turnham, "he used to come to my house and sit and read it." 1 Dennis Hanks would fain have us believe that he himself was the purchaser of this book, and that he had stood as a sort of first preceptor to Abe in the science of law. "I had like to forgot," writes Dennis, with his usual modesty, "How did Abe get his knowledge of law? This is the fact about it. I bought the 'Statute of Indiana,' and from that he learned the principles of law, and also myself. Every man should become acquainted of the principles of law." The Bible, according to Mrs. Lincoln, was not one of his studies: "he sought more congenial books." At that time he neither talked nor read upon religious subjects. If he had any opinions about them, he kept them to himself.

1 He also read at Turnham's house Scott's Lessons and Sindbad the Sailor.

Abraham borrowed Weems's "Life of Washington" from his neighbor, old Josiah Crawford,—not Andrew Crawford, the school-teacher, as some of his biographers have it. The "Life" was read with great avidity in the intervals of work, and, when not in use, was carefully deposited on a shelf, made of a clapboard laid on two pins. But just behind the shelf there was a great crack between the logs of the wall; and one night, while Abe was dreaming in the loft, a storm came up, and the rain, blown through the opening, soaked his precious book from cover to cover. Crawford was a sour and churlish fellow at best, and flatly refused to take the damaged book back again. He said, that, if Abe had no money to pay for it, he could work it out. Of course, there was no alternative; and Abe was obliged to discharge the debt by "pulling fodder" three days, at twenty-five cents a day. Crawford afterwards paid dearly for his churlishness.

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