CHAPTER I

[i-1] Henry Pirtle, quoted in Herndon, i, 7. See, also, W. F. Booker, in Barrett (New), i, 6; Irelan, xvi, 21.

[i-2] George B. Balch in Browne, 87; Samuel Haycraft in Barrett (New), i, 8; Rev. Thomas Goodwin, _ibid._, 115.

[i-3] Atkinson, 44-45.

[i-4] Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married near Beechland, in Washington County, Kentucky, on the 12th of June, 1806.

[i-5] Usher F. Linder, who was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, became a prominent Democratic leader in Illinois. Delivering a eulogy of Lincoln in 1865 and speaking from his recollections of the old Kentucky days, he said: “They were a good family. They were poor, and the very poorest people, I might say, of the middle classes, but they were true.”

[i-6] Sarah Lincoln was born February 10, 1807. The removal to Nolin Creek is said to have occurred in the following year.

[i-7] Speed, 30; Browne, 489; Barrett (New), ii, 122-23; Morgan, 255-56.

[i-8] The reader who wishes to follow Thomas Lincoln in his migrations is referred for some of the fuller accounts to: Lamon, 12-15, 19-22, 25-26, 73-75; Herndon, i, 15-18, 57-61; Holland, 24-26, 38-41; Brockett, 37-40, 51-54, 57; Barrett, 21-24, 30-34; Barrett (New), i, 9-10, 12-14, 25-26; Brooks, 6, 8-13, 44-45; Browne, 42, 45-51, 80-85; Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 40, 51-55, 94-101; Tarbell, i, 13-15, 18-19, 45-49, 59; Nicolay and Hay, i, 24-30, 45-47; Whitney’s _Life_, i, 21-28, 57-64; Stoddard, 10-18, 57-59; Coffin, 18-29, 46-49; Irelan, xvi, 34-40, 64-65; Curtis’s _Lincoln_, 19-22, 26, 30; _Works_, vi, 26-31.

[i-9] Gridley, 47-48. For the story of a previous speculation, of a similar nature, that resulted disastrously, see Dr. C. C. Graham in Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 233; also, Hitchcock, 93-97, and Gridley, 47. The loss of the cargo by an accident to the vessel, however, as told by Dr. Graham, bears a striking, perhaps suspicious resemblance to what befell Thomas Lincoln (note 8) when he tried to move his belongings by water from Kentucky to Indiana.

[i-10] Nancy Hanks Lincoln died at Little Pigeon Creek, Indiana, on October 5, 1818, in her thirty-fifth year.

[i-11] Holland, 23; Arnold in Oldroyd, 33; Barrett (New), i, 16; Browne, 43-44; Coffin, 28; Ketcham, 12; Hart’s _Sketch_, 5; L. S. Portor, in the _Woman’s Home Companion_, February 1909, pp. 10, 64; see, also, Speed, 19. Attention is called to the slight variations in the language as reported by these several writers.

[i-12] In the Little Pigeon Creek cabin were Abraham, his sister Sarah, and cousin Dennis Hanks, sometimes called Dennis Friend, whom luckless chance had made a member of the Lincoln family. The Johnston children comprised John D., Sarah, and Matilda.

[i-13] Thomas Lincoln and Sarah Bush Johnston were married on December 2, 1819. The episode of the debts is related in Barrett (New), i, 17; Herndon, i, 26; Lamon, 29; Coffin, 31; McClure’s _Stories_, 272-74; Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 52.

[i-14] But see charges or surmises that Thomas Lincoln, in his anxiety to win Mrs. Johnston, had misrepresented conditions at home: Lamon, 11, 30-31; also Herndon, i, 27; Brooks, 28; French, 28; Leland, 18; Irelan, xvi, 44; Hapgood, 9; Stoddard, 21-22, 24; Sheppard, 118. These latter writers, following the lead of Lamon, have done so, apparently, to explain what needs no historical explanation--an improvident marriage; and Lamon quotes neither chapter nor verse for the faith, or, more accurately speaking, the lack of faith, that is in him. On the other hand, Cousin Dennis Hanks, though not always a trustworthy witness, offers what look like sufficient reasons for the lady’s course. “Tom,” he says, “had a kind o’ way with the women, an’ maybe it was somethin’ she tuk comfort in to have a man that didn’t drink an’ cuss none.” (Atkinson, 21.)

[i-15] Irelan, xvi, 26-27, 41; Lamon, 32; Leland, 20; Jones, 4; Hapgood, 8; Janes, 7; E. I. Lewis in St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, February 12, 1899.

[i-16] Brooks, 28; Short Autobiography, in _Works_, vi, 27.

[i-17] Danville (Ill.) _News_, February 12, 1904.

[i-18] Probably Webster’s _American Spelling Book_, Dilworth’s _Spelling Book_, Pike’s _Arithmetic_, Murray’s _English Reader_, Scott’s _Lessons in Elocution_, and the _Kentucky Preceptor_. Lincoln studied Kirkham’s _Grammar_ after he left home. See Dodge, 4-6; Sumner, ix, 375; Scripps, 3; Herndon, i, 34, 44-45, note, 75-76; Lamon, 37, note, 50; Hitchcock, 87; Atkinson, 18; Leland, 22; Browne, 70, 96; Brooks, 54; Morse, i, 19; Holland, 46; Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 124-25, 132; Tarbell, i, 66-67; Nicolay and Hay, i, 84; Nicolay, 25-26; Nicolay’s _Boy’s Life_, 36-37; Ketcham, 66; Howells, 29-30; Irelan, xvi, 96-97; Stoddard, 70; Browne’s _Lincoln and Men_, i, 158-59; Jones, 8.

[i-19] Scripps, 3; Speed, 38; Herndon, i, 36; Lamon, 37, 57 note; Tarbell, i, 29-34; Binns, 18-19; Atkinson, 23-27; Selby, 45; Stowe, 15; Nicolay and Hay, i, 35; Oldroyd, 33-34; McClure’s _Stories_, 22-23; Schurz’s _Essay_, 4-5; Chittenden, 433-34; Nicolay, 14; Nicolay’s _Boy’s Life_, 23; Morse, i, 13; Swett’s _Reminiscences_, in Rice, 459; Raymond, 22; Hobson, 30-31; Barrett (New), i, 23-24; Arnold, 21; Brooks, 23-24, 29-30; Browne, 66-68; Holland, 31; Morgan, 19-21; Whitney’s _Life_, i, 41-42; Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 69-71; French, 24-25; Hitchcock, 87-88; Leland, 22; Stoddard, 32-33, 36-37, 43; Sumner, ix, 375; Curtis’s _Lincoln_, 56-58; Beach, 8-9; H. W. Mabie, in the _Chautauquan_, April, 1900, pp. 33-34, and in the _Outlook_, February 20, 1904, pp. 454-55. See also _infra_, p. 331.

[i-20] According to most of our authorities this was the book by Mason L. Weems, entitled _The Life of George Washington; with curious anecdotes, equally honourable to himself and exemplary to his young countrymen_. But Scripps (3), Raymond (21-22), Brockett (47), and Holland (32) are apparently accurate in stating that the work was Dr. David Ramsay’s _The Life of Washington_. It should be remembered that Mr. Lincoln himself, looking with uncommon care through the advance sheets of Scripps’s biography, published in 1860, made no correction as to the name Ramsay there employed in connection with the anecdote. Lincoln’s reference to Weems’s _Life_, moreover, in the speech at Trenton (_Works_, vi, 150-51), indicates that he had read that book during his early childhood--some years before he could as a “tall and long-armed” youth have “made a clean sweep” of Crawford’s fodder-corn.

[i-21] Herndon, i, 52, note.

[i-22] For the fuller accounts of this episode see: Whitney’s _Life_, i, 42-43; Arnold, 23; Raymond, 21-22; Lamon, 38, 50-51, 55, 66, note; Scripps, 3; Holland, 31-32; Brockett, 47-48; Herndon, i, 37, 52, note; Stoddard, 37-38; French, 26; Irelan, xvi, 55-56; Brooks, 24-25; Barrett, 25-26; Browne, 67, 69-70; Bartlett, 116-17. A somewhat fanciful narrative may be read in Thayer, 120-30, 177.

[i-23] Herndon, i, 29-31; Pratt, 11-12; Hapgood, 18-19. An instance of truth-telling by Lincoln, regardless of impending punishment, quite after the Weems manner, is related by Thayer (110-11), in his story about the broken buck’s horn.

[i-24] Lamon, 71.

[i-25] How serious these abuses ultimately became may be inferred from Merrick’s narrative (174-80), and from what Horace White says on the subject, in _Money and Banking_, pp. 351-52:--

“The bewildering state of the paper currency before the Civil War may be learned from the numerous bank-note reporters and counterfeit detectors of the period. It was the aim of these publications to give early information to enable the public to avoid spurious and worthless notes in circulation. These were of various kinds: (1) ordinary counterfeits; (2) genuine notes altered from lower denominations to higher ones; (3) genuine notes of failed banks altered to the names of solvent banks; (4) genuine notes of solvent banks with forged signatures; (5) spurious notes, such as those of banks that had no existence; (6) spurious notes of good banks, as 20’s of a bank that never issued 20’s; (7) notes of old, closed banks still in circulation.

“The number of counterfeit and spurious notes was quite appalling, and disputes between payer and payee as to the goodness of notes were of frequent occurrence, ranging over the whole gamut of doubts,--as to whether the issuing bank was sound or unsound, whether the note was genuine or counterfeit, and, if sound and genuine, whether the discount was within reasonable limits.”

[i-26] For a severe, though manifestly biased comment on the bad money episode, so far as it concerned Lincoln, see Edmonds, 47-48.

[i-27] Wilson’s _Washington_, 11-12.

[i-28] Hill, 219-20.

[i-29] New Salem, Illinois, when Lincoln took up his residence there in the summer of 1831, was a busy little village of recent origin, near the west bank of the Sangamon River, in the county of that name. Its site--for the place has long since fallen into decay--is within the present limits of Menard County, about twenty miles northwest of Springfield.

[i-30] The anecdote is from Parkinson’s _Tour in America_, ii, 436-37 (London, 1805). Whether or not it had come under Lincoln’s notice we have no means of knowing.

[i-31] William McNeely, in Oldroyd, 393-94; Browne, 104.

[i-32] John Rowan Herndon, in Herndon, i, 98.

[i-33] William G. Greene, in Browne, 116-17; and in Onstot, 81-83. A more circumstantial account, based on correspondence with Greene, may be found in Coffin, 73-76. See, also, Nicolay and Hay, i, 110-11; Herndon, i, 98-99; Lamon, 136-37; Tarbell, i, 92; Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 160; Holland, 54; Brooks, 66.

[i-34] Lincoln’s experience with Berry reminds one of Benjamin Franklin’s trials with his partner Hugh Meredith, who was “often seen drunk in the streets, and playing at low games in the ale houses.” It is an interesting coincidence, moreover, that both Franklin and Lincoln were aided, at these critical junctures, by generous friends.

[i-35] Dennis Hanks, in Atkinson, 50.

[i-36] Leonard Swett, in Rice, 465-66.

[i-37] At about the time Abraham Lincoln thus spoke to his creditors in Illinois, a young man in far-away Maine named Hannibal Hamlin, destined to share his electoral honors, used somewhat similar language under corresponding circumstances. He had gone on the bond of a certain deputy sheriff for four thousand dollars. That officer became a defaulter, and the people who had claims against him looked to his bondsmen. Hamlin, having called the creditors together, said: “My friends, I have lived among you only a few years, but I think you know that I keep my word. I am poor, young, and struggling for an honest support for myself. This struggle will continue right among you, my neighbors. I am unable now to meet this just debt; but if you will give me time, and God will give me strength, I will pay off every dollar I owe you, even if it takes me a lifetime to do it.”

He redeemed his promise to the last cent; but at what cost may be inferred from his exclamation, many years later, in telling the story: “Heavens! how long it kept my nose on the grindstone.”

A fuller narrative of the incident may be found in Hamlin, 46. For another somewhat similar episode, in the early life of Andrew Jackson, the reader is referred to Brady, 56-57.

[i-38] A patron of Samuel Hill’s store, Harvey Ross who carried the mails, once told how he, as well as others, was impressed by Lincoln’s straightforward methods. His narrative which belongs perhaps to this period may be found in Onstot, 76-77.

“Mr. Lincoln,” said Ross, “was very attentive to business; was kind and obliging to the customers, and they had so much confidence in his honesty that they preferred to trade with him rather than Hill. This was true of the ladies who said he was honest and would tell the truth about the goods. I went into the store one day to buy a pair of buckskin gloves, and asked him if he had a pair that would fit me. He threw down a pair on the counter: ‘There is a pair of dogskin gloves that I think will fit you, and you can have them for seventy-five cents.’ When he called them dogskin I was surprised, as I had never heard of such a thing before. At that time no factory gloves had been brought into the county. All the gloves and mittens then worn were made by hand, and by the women of the neighborhood from tanned deerskins, and the Indians did the tanning. A large buckskin could be bought for fifty to seventy-five cents. So I said to Lincoln: ‘How do you know they are dogskin?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you how I know they are dogskin. Jack Clary’s dog killed Tom Watkins’s sheep, and Tom Watkins’s boy killed the dog, old John Mounts tanned the dogskin, and Sally Spears made the gloves, and that is the way I know they are dogskin gloves.’ So I asked no more, but paid six bits, took the gloves, and can truly say that I have worn buckskin and dogskin gloves for sixty years and never found a pair that did me such service as the pair I got from Lincoln.”

[i-39] Lincoln to George Spears, _Works_, i, 11. A facsimile of the letter is reproduced from the Menard-Salem-Lincoln Souvenir Album, in Tarbell, i, 97.

[i-40] Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 190, note.

[i-41] This kind act is attributed to James Short and one of the Greenes,--whether Bowling or William G. appears to be in doubt. See Lamon, 138-39, 149-50; Arnold, 41-42; Herndon, i, 114-15; Leland, 43-44; Barrett (New), i, 40; Morse, i, 42; Curtis’s _Lincoln_, 33-34; Stoddard, 88-89; Irelan, xvi, 109; Tarbell, i, 105-06; Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 188-90.

[i-42] William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, relates (Herndon, i, 100): “He was a long time meeting these claims, even as late as 1848 sending to me from Washington portions of his salary as Congressman to be applied on the unpaid remnant of the Berry and Lincoln indebtedness. But in time he extinguished it all, even to the last penny.”

According to Nicolay (36): “It was not until his return from Congress, seventeen years after the purchase of the store, that he finally relieved himself of the last installment of his ‘national debt.’”

[i-43] Several decades thereafter, when reference was made in President Lincoln’s hearing to the large tracts of valuable land acquired by Surveyor-General Edward F. Beale, in California, the Executive may be said to have suffered no twinges of conscience if he remarked, as was reported: “Yes, they say Beale is monarch of all he surveyed.”

[i-44] Henry McHenry, in Herndon, i, 113.

[i-45] The Grigsby affair. (Master, 16-17.)

[i-46] Frank E. Stevens, in _Magazine of History_, February, 1905, pp. 86-90.

[i-47] William G. Greene, who was present, so quotes Lincoln; but Lamon (111) and Stevens (_Black Hawk_, 283) report him to have said: “Boys, the man actually threw me once fair, broadly so; and the second time, this very fall, he threw me fairly, though not so apparently so.”

[i-48] _Magazine of History_, February, 1905, pp. 86-90. See also Stevens’s _Black Hawk_, 281-83; Oldroyd, 516-17; Browne, 112-13; Lamon, 109-12; Herndon, i, 87-88; Nicolay and Hay, i, 94; Thayer, 239-40; Lincoln and Douglas, 194a-194b; Master, 39-40.

[i-49] The whole experience left a deep impression in Lincoln’s mind. After his first nomination to the Presidency, he received one day a delegation of college men, among whom was Professor Risdon M. Moore, the son of Jonathan, that quondam referee.

“Which of the Moore families do you belong to?” inquired the candidate, with a twinkle of the eye. “I have a grudge against one of them.”

To which the Professor, with a still merrier twinkle, replied: “I suppose it is my family you have the grudge against; but we are going to elect you President, and call it even.”

Thereupon Mr. Lincoln, narrating to those who were present the story of his defeat by Thompson, concluded with the words: “I never had been thrown in a wrestling-match until the man from that company did it. He could have thrown a grizzly bear.”

Nor did the reminiscences concerning that memorable encounter cease there. Discussing former days with old friends who visited him at the White House, President Lincoln several times referred to the occurrence. One of these interviews is thus related by Mr. Greene: “During the rebellion, in 1864, I had occasion to see Mr. Lincoln in his office at Washington, and, after having recalled many of our early recollections, he said, ‘Bill, whatever became of our old antagonist, Thompson,--that big curly-headed fellow who threw me at Rock Island?’ I replied I did not know, and wondered why he asked. He playfully remarked that if he knew where he was living, he would give him a post-office, by way of showing him that he bore him no ill-will.”

[i-50] Henry McHenry, in Lamon, 154; Browne, 104.

[i-51] Confidence in Lincoln as an arbitrator continued through his later career. This is evinced by the following telegram, quoted by Hill (250) from the Orendorff collection:--

CHICAGO, Oct. 14, 1853.

To ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Springfield, Ill.

Can you come here immediately and act as arbitrator in the crossing case between the Illinois Central and Northern Indiana R.R. Companies if you should be appointed? Answer and say yes if possible.

(Signed) J. F. JOY.

[i-52] Address on Benjamin Ferguson, delivered at a meeting of the Washington Temperance Society on February 8, 1842.

[i-53] Lincoln read this book during a series of visits that he made for the purpose to the home of David Turnham, a constable, who owned the volume. It was entitled: “The Revised Laws of Indiana, adopted and enacted by the General Assembly at their eighth session. To which are prefixed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Indiana, and sundry other documents connected with the Political History of the Territory and State of Indiana. Arranged and published by authority of the General Assembly. Corydon: Printed by Carpenter and Douglass. 1824.”

[i-54] Herndon, i, 52; Tarbell’s _Early Life_, 72.

[i-55] Alban Jasper Conant, in _Liber Scriptorum_, 172; and in _McClure’s Magazine_, March, 1909, p. 514. That Lincoln’s picture of close application was not overdrawn may be inferred from this paragraph in Lamon (140), based on the recollections of an old settler: “‘He used to read law,’ says Henry McHenry, ‘in 1832 or 1833, barefooted, seated in the shade of a tree, and would grind around with the shade, just opposite Berry’s grocery store, a few feet south of the door.’ He occasionally varied the attitude by lying flat on his back, and ‘putting his feet up the tree,’--a situation which might have been unfavorable to mental application in the case of a man with shorter extremities.” See, also: Nicolay and Hay, i, 112-13; Herndon, i, 101-02; Browne, 121-23.

[i-56] Report of an interview by Albert B. Orr, with C. F. Warden, in the McKeesport (Pa.) _Times_, February 12, 1909: also a letter from Mr. Orr to the author.

[i-57] In response to the writer’s inquiries Henry B. Rankin of Springfield, Illinois, at one time a clerk in Lincoln and Herndon’s office, furnished a statement that is of topographical interest. The communication was addressed to the Hon. James R. B. Van Cleave of that city, through whose courtesy it is here published:

“The route Mr. Lincoln went over, in and out of Springfield from Salem when he made his home in that village was entirely on the south side of the Sangamon river, not the north as the travel from that vicinity has been for the past fifty years. There was no bridge over the Sangamon river in its entire length while Mr. Lincoln was at Salem. The first bridge over this river was built in the early ’40s at the then Carpenter’s Mills in this county. The next at Petersburg a few years later, in the ’40s, and _via_ Athens in 1843.

“Mr. Lincoln’s trips to Springfield were usually made by the road as now located, for the first few miles bearing south out from Salem,--from that on into the city there have been more or less minor changes since, at various places,--on to the junction with the present ‘Jacksonville and Springfield road,’ and _via_ it, entered the city on the west. Quite occasionally he walked from Salem to Springfield, and these trips were ‘across country,’ skirting the bluffs and breaks on the south bank of the Sangamon river ‘as the crow flies,’--by shortest angles, some five miles shorter trip in.

“I have heard Mr. Lincoln in the old Lincoln and Herndon law office refer to these trips on foot into the city across the then unfenced prairie and woods. So many writers about Mr. Lincoln’s early years have traveled over the road from Springfield to Petersburg _via_ Athens,--now the nearest and always chosen one,--that you will please pardon me for the stress I place on the difference between the two roads. The road south of Salem across the ‘Rocky ford’ of ‘Rock Creek,’ and several other streams,--then called ‘creeks,’ had to bear westerly after leaving the Sangamon bottoms south of Salem, and cross these creeks at the most favorable places between banks best fitted to span crude bridges over. This made the ‘foot-path way’ from Springfield to Salem, a much shorter one than the wagon road between them. This wagon road as _then_ traveled was fully twenty-five miles between Salem and the Capital City.”

[i-58] A reminder of this toilsome period is to be found, many years later, in the letter addressed to J. M. Brockman:--

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, September 25, 1860.

DEAR SIR: Yours of the 24th, asking “the best mode, of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the law,” is received. The mode is very simple, though laborious and tedious. It is only to get the books and read and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” and after reading it carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty’s “Pleadings,” Greenleaf’s “Evidence,” and Story’s “Equity,” etc., in succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing. Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

[i-59] The Revised Laws of Illinois, edition of 1833, pp. 99-102, §1 and §9. Hill (57-58) is the only writer on Lincoln that has taken notice of this prohibition.

[i-60] There appears to be some ground for controversy as to when Lincoln was admitted to the bar. He, himself, preparing notes of his life for the Scripps biography, sometime during 1860, wrote: “In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license.” (See _Works_, vi, 33.)

And Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s collaborator, referring to the records, states (_Century Magazine_, June, 1904, p. 279): “The first step in Lincoln’s legal career is thus set forth in an entry found in the records of the Circuit Court of Sangamon County, Illinois, dated March 24, 1836. ‘It is ordered by the Court that it be certified that Abraham Lincoln is a person of good moral character.’ After this necessary preliminary, as appears from the records of the clerk of the Supreme Court, he was on September 9 duly licensed to practise in all the courts of the State.”

But Hill (61) asserts: “He was legally qualified on March 24, 1836, and his professional life properly dates from that day.”

Reaffirming this conclusion, Mr. Hill writes to the author: “There is no doubt that Lincoln was legally admitted to practice March 24, 1836, as is shown by the papers on file; but casting back to find out when he was admitted to the bar, Lincoln undoubtedly relied upon the rolls of attorneys for the year 1836, in which his name appeared September 9th of that year.”

Summarizing the facts, Judge John P. Hand, of the Illinois Supreme Court, said in a Lincoln memorial address delivered on February 11, 1909: “He was licensed as an attorney, September 9, 1836, enrolled March 1, 1837, and commenced practice April 21, 1837.” (See Illinois Reports, ccxxxviii, 13; and MacChesney, 204.)

Yet beyond a doubt, Lincoln appeared as an attorney in actions at law, previous to April 21, 1837. Following the rather offhand ways of the day, he tried some cases at the bar, as we have seen, before all the requirements for his admission had been complied with. The present writer ventures the opinion that, according to statute, three steps must have been taken before a person was, at this period, legally qualified to practice as an attorney or counselor at law, within the State. First, he had to obtain a certificate “of his good moral character,” from a County Court; second, he had to secure a license signed by two justices of the Supreme Court; and third, having taken the oath of office, he had to have his name entered on the roll kept by the clerk of that court. It was not, therefore, until Lincoln had been formally enrolled that his career as a lawyer may correctly be said to have begun. (See Revised Laws of Illinois for 1833, pp. 99-100; and a decision of the Supreme Court, December Term, 1840, in the matter of E. C. Fellows, an attorney who had failed to have his name enrolled--Illinois Reports, iii, 369.)