Lincoln

Abraham, the sixteenth president of the United States. He was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809. He died in Washington, D. C., April 15, 1865. The Lincolns were English Quakers. Grandfather Abraham Lincoln, after whom the president was named, was a Virginian of some property. About 1780 he moved to Kentucky with three sons. He settled near his friend and relative, Daniel Boone. He was shot in his clearing by an Indian. Thomas, the youngest son, grew up to be a carpenter. In 1806 he married Nancy Hanks, the handsome young daughter of his employer. School facilities in those days were limited. Thomas himself could not read. He was barely able to scrawl his signature. Nancy was able to read and write. She was a sprightly woman of superior character.

Thomas Lincoln appears to have been an indolent, shiftless sort of a man. He settled on a poor piece of land near Hodgensville and sank into poverty. The house in which the family lived was built of logs. It had one room. The floor was bare ground, trodden hard. There was one low doorway and a small square hole cut through the wall for a window. The window was without glass; the doorway without a door. In winter a deerskin was nailed over the window and a bearskin was hung across the doorway. The fireplace and chimney were built of sticks and stones plastered with clay. The furniture consisted of a pole bedstead in one corner of the shack; blocks of wood served for chairs; a rude bench stood by the fireplace, a broad puncheon, or split log, standing on pole legs, was the only table.

Here Nancy Hanks and her shiftless husband made their home, and here Abraham Lincoln was born. He was a fine, strong, contented child. He lay in a bed of furs staring at the rafters and cracks of light overhead. Even among her neighbors Mrs. Lincoln had a reputation as an efficient housekeeper. Her hearth was always swept, her cabin tidy, her children clean. She sheared her own sheep and spun the wool into cloth. She was her own tailor and seamstress. She helped her husband in the field with axe and hoe. Game abounded, and she was a sure shot with the rifle. She taught Abraham to read and made him familiar with Bible stories. At five years of age he could read and talk better than some of the overgrown young men of the settlement.

In 1816 when Abraham was about seven years old, Thomas Lincoln borrowed two horses, packed his family and household belongings on their backs and started on a long, tiresome journey to Indiana. He had heard that the soil was richer and that a new settlement near Gentryville offered a better chance for a poor man. The first winter in Indiana was passed in a hastily built shed, inclosed on three sides and open toward the south. A large camp fire was kept burning in front to beat off the cold. A patch of ground was cleared for a cornfield, and a year later the family moved with great satisfaction into a log house. It was years before windows, floors, and doors were provided. Abraham remembered afterward that three-legged stools in place of blocks were considered a great improvement in the family furniture. The house was provided also with an attic in which Abraham slept. He climbed up and down by means of wooden pegs driven into the wall. His bed was a pile of dry leaves and bearskins. The surrounding country was full of game, deer, bear, and wild turkeys. He learned to use a rifle.

In 1818 the Lincoln settlement, as it was known, was visited by an epidemic that carried off a number of the settlers. Thomas Lincoln was the carpenter and made the coffins. He whipped his own lumber out of logs from the neighboring forest. Nancy Lincoln was among the number who had to go. She bade her children farewell and was buried under a spreading sycamore tree. The following summer Abraham sent over one hundred miles for a traveling preacher to come and preach his mother's funeral sermon. Years afterward, when a public man, he used to say, "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

The next year Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and returned with a second wife, a Sarah Bush Johnson, a widow with some little property. She brought with her a four horse team, six chairs, a table, a bureau, a chest, a feather bed, and pillows--luxuries that the ragged Lincoln children had never seen or dreamed of. The second Mrs. Lincoln had two children of her own, but she took Abraham and his older sister Sarah to her heart. She clothed them warmly, provided them with comfortable beds, and made her husband bestir himself to provide windows and doors. An era of comparative prosperity dawned upon the Lincoln family. Abe worked faithfully, clearing, providing game, and helping the stepmother about the house. Speaking of him after he had grown to be a man, she said, "Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused to do anything I asked him. Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see."

Young Abraham had very little schooling, less than a year all put together, but during all these years of hardship and work he was hungry for reading matter. He read the Bible through and through. He would walk miles to borrow a book. On one occasion a borrowed volume was left too near a crack in the house and became spoiled by the rain. Abe worked for the neighbor to pay for it. From short terms of school he got some little inkling of arithmetic. For want of a slate--paper and lead pencils being unknown--he ciphered on a wooden shovel with a piece of charcoal. When the surface became covered with figures, he whittled them off with a jackknife. He managed in some way to get a very elementary knowledge of grammar. He learned enough of the rudiments of surveying to run lines for the neighbors.

He grew up to be a gaunt, homely young man. He was six feet, four inches in height. His head was large and well poised. His features were neither handsome nor forbidding. His nose was slightly Roman; his mouth wide cut. Through life he had a dark, weather-beaten complexion. He was strong and active, a "powerful hand" at logging bees. He was fond of running, wrestling, and pitching weights, and had an inexhaustible fund of quaint stories. He was a peaceable young man, utterly without physical fear. He took the side of the unfortunate and the oppressed. He held the bullies of the neighborhood in check. No bullying of the weak was possible when Abe was around. He grew up with the reputation of being very fair and square.

In 1830 Thomas Lincoln decided to move again, this time to the state of Illinois. He settled in a prairie country near Decatur. Abraham, who was now twenty-one years old, remained with the family long enough to assist in building a house, in breaking up fifteen acres of land, and in surrounding it with a rail fence. The future president then engaged in a variety of occupations. He made two trips to New Orleans with a flatboat, returning full of arguments against slavery. In 1832 he was made captain of a company of volunteers enlisted for the Black Hawk War. Many years afterward, in relating his experience, he said, "I saw no live, fighting Indians, but I had a great many struggles with the mosquitoes." He tried storekeeping. His partner proved to be a worthless, drunken man. The business failed. It was many years before Lincoln was able to pay the last of the debts. In 1832 he was the Whig candidate from Sangamon County for the legislature, but he was defeated by the Democratic candidate. Judge Logan, with whom he afterward studied law, said of him, "He was a very tall, gawky, rough looking fellow then; his pantaloons didn't meet his shoes by six inches, but he made a very honest, sensible speech."

Lincoln had a strong desire to get into politics. In 1834 he was again a candidate for the legislature, this time successfully. He became acquainted with Stephen A. Douglas, his future rival, and took a part in the moving of the capital of Illinois from Vandalia to Springfield. In the meantime Lincoln had been studying law. He formed a partnership with an old lawyer and opened an office in the new capital. Lincoln was a politician and an effective public speaker, but he never became learned in the law. Instead of studying law books, he sat with his heels on a table, reading literature. In trying a case he paid very little attention to points of law. He preferred to carry the case straight to the jury on questions of right and wrong. His law practice was never large, but it enabled him to meet family expenses. In 1838 he was sent to the legislature, this time from Springfield, and was returned again in 1840. He took an active part in the Whig campaign of that year, stumping the state in favor of William Henry Harrison. His ability to hold and please a political audience was so marked that he became a leading man in the Whig party.

In 1842 he married Miss Mary Todd, a young lady from Kentucky who happened to be visiting at Springfield. After boarding for a year or two at a hotel they moved into a small frame house which they occupied until Lincoln's election to the presidency. In 1846 an ambition of long standing was gratified by his election to Congress. He was the only Whig from the state of Illinois. Stephen A. Douglas was one of the two state senators. In Congress Lincoln made the acquaintance of Webster, John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and other famous public men of the time. He supported a bill for the abolition of slave trade in the city of Washington, and voted forty times in favor of the Wilmot Proviso. He was opposed to the declaration of war with Mexico, but he was in favor of sending supplies liberally to the boys who were in the ranks. He took part in every political campaign. Stephen A. Douglas, the "darling of the Democracy," was his chief rival. The Suckers, as the people of Illinois were called, termed Douglas the "Little Giant," and Lincoln, "Honest Abe."

In 1856 Lincoln took part in the formation of the Republican Party. He supported John C. Fremont for president. The joint debates between Lincoln and Douglas attracted national attention. In 1860 Lincoln was talked of as a presidential possibility. Seward, with the great state of New York and the East behind him, was the leading candidate. Some of Seward's supporters were unwise enough to refer to Lincoln's want of education and to the rail-splitting days of his youth. John Hanks, an old neighbor, a relative of Lincoln's mother, walked into the convention with two of the old rails that Lincoln had split. He mounted with them to the platform and displayed a banner calling upon the delegates to vote for Abe Lincoln, the railsplitter of Sangamon County. The convention went wild with enthusiasm. The "railsplitter" was nominated, and, owing to a division of the Democracy, the "railsplitter" was elected president.

Although during the campaign Lincoln had made a statement that, if elected, he would not interfere with slavery where it then existed, excitement in the South rose to a fever heat. As the time of his in auguration approached it became evident that the Southern states would secede from the Union. His life was threatened. In order to avoid trouble he was smuggled through Baltimore to Washington by night. When bidding farewell to his friends at Springfield he said, "I go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington."

In his inaugural speech, delivered from the steps of the national capitol, March 4, 1861, Lincoln said, addressing himself to the South, "In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government; while I have the most solemn one to `preserve, protect, and defend' it."

With the exception of a term in Congress Lincoln took up the duties of president an untried public man. Residents of Washington, foreign ambassadors, influential people generally, accustomed to men of greater polish, were disposed to make sport of his awkward, homely ways. Even the leaders of the Republican party felt that he was unequal to the situation, and that they ought to tell him what to do. Lincoln invited these leaders to become members of his first cabinet. William H. Seward was made secretary of state, Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury, and Simon Cameron, secretary of the treasury, and Simon Cameron, secretary of war. They found him ready to accept advice, but to their astonishment they soon found that there was a point at which he took the reins in his own hands and compelled them all to follow his directions.

It is difficult to believe that a public man ever passed through more trying experiences than did Lincoln during the Civil War. He tried in the first place to avert war with the South. He had sworn to defend the Constitution and to preserve the Union. He had to reconcile the warring elements of the Republican party, to restrain hot-headed advocates of immediate abolition, to pacify, if possible, the leaders of the South, to meet armed opposition to the government with force, to fill an empty treasury, to form an army without officers, to arm and equip soldiers without guns or military supplies, and to organize armies without competent military leaders.

To realize Lincoln's position it should be understood that a great war was never undertaken under more embarrassing circumstances of selfishness, jealousy, incompetency, and want of preparation. In the midst of his greatest responsibilities, when the fate of the Union seemed resting on the appointment of the right commander or the event of a battle, Lincoln was likely to be interrupted by importunate delegations in the interests of rival candidates for some village postoffice. He was too kindhearted, too considerate. As the war drew on, lines of care furrowed his homely face. The death of his favorite son, Tad, added private grief to the burden he was carrying for the nation. The horrors of warfare weighed upon his spirits. Tender-hearted and kind, he could not bear to think of sending thousands and thousands of men to their death, and yet he felt that the war must be carried on.

He was accessible to people of every degree. Cabinet officers, congressmen, and generals laid their plans before him. Delegations appointed and self-appointed waited upon him to urge their views. He came and went like the most ordinary citizen. The veriest darkey that scrubbed the steps was able to have audience with "Massa" Lincoln. The wife whose husband lay languishing in some far-off prison did not come in vain to ask for exchange or furlough. The mother, whose weary son fell asleep on the sentry's beat and had been condemned to be shot for neglect of duty, came to see Lincoln, and went away, her eyes streaming with tears of thankfulness. The most brilliant mind in the nation could not sway Lincoln from the dictates of common sense. His integrity could not be shaken; his sense of justice could not be perverted, but he was compassionate and merciful. The spirit in which he carried on the war may be known best from his own words in his second inaugural speech:

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so, still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Should the reader marvel at the beauty of this language and wonder where an unschooled man learned it, the key may be found in the old Bible that Nancy Hanks taught her boy to read in that lowly Kentucky cabin fifty years gone by.

April 9, 1865, two soldiers met at Appomattox Court House to conclude terms of peace. Lee's veterans in gray turned their faces toward their desolate homesteads; Grant's boys in blue turned their faces northward. The South was glad that the one-sided struggle was over; the North was jubilant with success. Lincoln's heart lifted. The Union was saved. His thoughts turned towards new problems, but, unknown to himself, his work was ended.

Only six days later, on the eve of Good Friday, April 14, Lincoln accompanied his family to Ford's Theater in Washington. About ten o'clock, John Wilkes Booth, a crazed actor, who hoped to win immortal fame in the thought of the South, entered the presidential box, placed a pistol against the president's head, fired, leaped to the stage, and made his escape. With a smile on his lips, the president fell unconscious. He was taken to a house near by, but never knew what had happened to him. His cabinet and family gathered around his bedside. When the sun rose next morning Lincoln had passed away.

Persons still living tell how the news of Lincoln's death spread like a pall over the nation. The newspapers came out with black borders; bells were tolled; flags were displayed at half mast; places of business were closed. The farmer left his plow in midfurrow; the mechanic laid aside his tools. People had no heart to work. Private funeral exercises were held Wednesday, the 19th, in the East room of the White House. The funeral procession then wended its way down Pennsylvania Avenue. The hearse, drawn by six gray horses, was preceded by twenty pall-bearers, selected from Congress, the army, the navy, and from civil life. The remains lay in state under the dome of the capitol the rest of that day and all night. Thousands upon thousands, senators and newsboys, took their last leave of Lincoln. Old soldiers hobbled forth from the hospitals to gaze for the last time on the face of their commander-in-chief.

Without doubt it would have been Lincoln's wish to be buried at Springfield. A special funeral train was made up. The president's remains were placed on view in a car draped with black. Guards stood at each corner of the casket with drawn swords. A slow schedule of running time was drawn up and adhered to. An engine ran ahead to clear the track. It was the most remarkable funeral procession ever held in the United States. In populous districts the train moved at a snail's pace. The entire population for miles and miles flocked to catch a last glimpse. The train moved literally between living walls for hundreds of miles. At Philadelphia a pause was made. The casket was carried to Independence Hall, where it lay for a day. At New York the remains lay in state in the City Hall. At Albany 50,000 people visited the state capitol. Special exercises were held and the remains were placed on view at Cleveland, Columbus, and Chicago. On the third of May the train reached Springfield. Appropriate exercises were held in the hall of the House of Representatives, and Lincoln was laid at rest in Oak Ridge Cemetery.

In 1874 a beautiful monument was unveiled in his honor. Perhaps no truer tribute was paid to him than by General Grant who on that day said, "To know him personally was to love and respect him for his great qualities of heart and head. In his death, the nation lost its greatest hero. In his death, the South lost its most just friend." No other American was ever mourned as was our martyr president. He was a man of the people. He rose from obscurity into eminence. He was a man of integrity and ability; his hand was at the helm during the most perilous period of our national existence; but the reason for such profound and universal grief must be sought in the fact that, somehow, in the death of Abraham Lincoln each individual felt that he had lost a just, a wise, a patient personal friend.

It was said of Washington that he was "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen"; but the last phrase belongs peculiarly to Lincoln. Beyond all doubt Abraham Lincoln is the most beloved of all Americans. There are, it may be, sections of the country in which he is not appreciated fully, but he is beyond controversy the first of Americans. Washington is respected; Franklin is commended; Jefferson is admired; but Lincoln is beloved.

In 1909 a memorial building was erected at the place of his birth. The Lincoln Park and the Lincoln statue of Chicago are tributes.

See Douglas; Booth; Gettysburg; Presidents; Hay; Seward; Civil War