Chapter 2

From a painting in the State Capitol, Springfield, Illinois. This picture is crude and, from a historic point of view, inaccurate. The celebrated flatboat built by Lincoln and by him piloted to New Orleans, was a much larger and better craft than the one here portrayed. The little structure over the dam is meant for the Rutledge and Cameron mill, but the real mill was a far more pretentious affair. There was not only a grist-mill, but also a saw-mill which furnished lumber to the settlers for many miles around. The mill was built in 1829. March 5, 1830, we find John Overstreet appearing before the County Commissioners' Court at Springfield and averring upon oath "that he is informed and believes that John Cameron and James Rutledge have erected a mill-dam on the Sangamon River which obstructs the navigation of said river;" and the Commissioners issued a notice to Cameron and Rutledge to alter the dam so as to restore the "safe navigation" of the river. James M. Rutledge, of Petersburg, a nephew of the mill-owner, helped build the mill, and says of it: "The mill was a frame structure, and was solidly built. They used to grind corn mostly, though some flour was made. At times they would run day and night. The saw-mill had an old-fashioned upright saw, and stood on the bank." For a time this mill was operated by Denton Offutt, and was under the immediate supervision of Lincoln. A few heavy stakes, a part of the old dam, still show themselves at low water.--_Note prepared by J. McCan Davis_.]

A NEW HOME.

The party settled some ten miles west of Decatur, in Macon County. Here John Hanks had the logs already cut for their new home, and Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, and Hall soon had a cabin erected. Mr. Lincoln himself (though writing in the third person) says: "Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham."[A]

If they were far from being his "first and only rails," they certainly were the most famous ones he or anybody else ever split. This was the last work he did for his father, for in the summer of that year (1830) he exercised the right of majority and started out to shift for himself. When he left his home to start life for himself, he went empty-handed. He was already some months over twenty-one years of age, but he had nothing in the world, not even a suit of respectable clothes; and one of the first pieces of work he did was "to split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut bark that would be necessary to make him a pair of trousers." He had no trade, no profession, no spot of land, no patron, no influence. Two things recommended him to his neighbors--he was strong, and he was a good fellow.

[Footnote A: Short autobiography written in 1860 for use in preparing a campaign biography. "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. The Century Co. Volume I., page 639.]

His strength made him a valuable laborer. Not that he was fond of hard labor. Mrs. Crawford says: "Abe was no hand to pitch into work like killing snakes;" but when he did work, it was with an ease and effectiveness which compensated his employer for the time he spent in practical jokes and extemporaneous speeches. He would lift as much as three ordinary men, and "My, how he would chop!" says Dennis Hanks. "His axe would flash and bite into a sugar-tree or sycamore, and down it would come. If you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin', you would say there was three men at work by the way the trees fell." Standing six feet four, he could out-lift, out-work, and out-wrestle any man he came in contact with. Friends and employers were proud of his strength, and boasted of it, never failing to pit him against any hero whose strength they heard vaunted. He himself was proud of it, and throughout his life was fond of comparing himself with tall and strong men. When the committee called on him in Springfield, in 1860, to notify him of his nomination as President, Governor Morgan of New York was of the number, a man of great height and brawn. "Pray, Governor, how tall may you be?" was Mr. Lincoln's first question. There is a story told of a poor man seeking a favor from him once at the White House. He was overpowered by the idea that he was in the presence of the President, and, his errand done, was edging shyly out, when Mr. Lincoln stopped him, insisting that he _measure_ with him. The man was the taller, as Mr. Lincoln had thought; and he went away evidently more abashed at the idea that he dared be taller than the President of the United States than that he had dared to venture into his presence.

Governor Hoyt tells an excellent story illustrating Lincoln's interest in muscle and his involuntary comparison of himself with any man who showed great strength. It was in 1859, after Lincoln had delivered a speech at the State Agricultural Fair of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The two men were making the rounds of the exhibits, and went into a tent to see a "strong man" perform. He went through the ordinary exercises with huge iron balls, tossing them in the air and catching them, and rolling them on his arms and back; and Mr. Lincoln, who evidently had never before seen such a thing, watched him with intense interest, ejaculating under his breath every now and then, "By George! By George!" When the performance was over, Governor Hoyt, seeing Mr. Lincoln's interest, asked him to go up and be introduced to the athlete. He did so; and, as he stood looking down musingly on the fellow, who was very short, and evidently wondering that a man so much shorter than he could be so much stronger, he suddenly broke out with one of his quaint speeches. "Why," he said, "why, I could lick salt off the top of your hat."

His strength won him popularity, but his good-nature, his wit, his skill in debate, his stories, were still more efficient in gaining him good-will. People liked to have him around, and voted him a good fellow to work with. Yet such were the conditions of his life at this time that, in spite of his popularity, nothing was open to him but hard manual labor. To take the first "job" which he happened upon--rail-splitting, ploughing, lumbering, boating, store-keeping--and make the most of it, thankful if thereby he earned his bed and board and yearly suit of jeans, was apparently all there was before Abraham Lincoln in 1830 when he started out for himself.

FIRST INDEPENDENT WORK.

Through the summer and fall of 1830 and the early winter of 1831, Mr. Lincoln worked in the vicinity of his father's new home, usually as a farm-hand and rail-splitter. Most of his work was done in company with John Hanks. Before the end of the winter he secured employment which he has given an account of himself (writing again in the third person):[A]

"During that winter Abraham, together with his stepmother's son, John D. Johnston, and John Hanks, yet residing in Macon County, hired themselves to Denton Offutt to take a flat-boat from Beardstown, Illinois, to New Orleans, and for that purpose were to join him--Offutt--at Springfield, Illinois, so soon as the snow should go off. When it did go off, which was about March 1, 1831, the country was so flooded as to make travelling by land impracticable; to obviate which difficulty they purchased a large canoe and came down the Sangamon River in it from where they were all living (near Decatur). This is the time and manner of Abraham's first entrance into Sangamon County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but learned from him that he had failed in getting a boat at Beardstown. This led to their hiring themselves to him for twelve dollars per month each, and getting the timber out of the trees, and building a boat at old Sangamon town on the Sangamon River, seven miles northwest of Springfield, which boat they took to New Orleans, substantially on the old contract."

Sangamon town, where Mr. Lincoln built the flatboat, has, since his day, completely disappeared from the earth; but then it was one of the flourishing settlements on the river of that name. Lincoln and his friends on arriving there in March immediately began work. There is still living in Springfield, Illinois, a man who helped Lincoln at the raft-building--Mr. John Roll, a well-known citizen, and one who has been prominent in the material advancement of the city. Mr. Roll remembers distinctly Lincoln's first appearance in Sangamon town. To a representative of this MAGAZINE who talked with him recently in Springfield he described Lincoln's looks when he first came to town. "He was a tall, gaunt young man," Mr. Roll said, "dressed in a suit of blue homespun jeans, consisting of a roundabout jacket, waistcoat, and breeches which came to within about four inches of his feet. The latter were encased in raw-hide boots, into the top of which, most of the time, his pantaloons were stuffed. He wore a soft felt hat which had at one time been black, but now, as its owner dryly remarked, 'it had been sunburned until it was a combine of colors.'"

Mr. Roll's relation to the newcomer soon became something more than that of a critical observer; he hired out to him, and says with pride, "I made every pin which went into that boat."

[Footnote A: Short autobiography written for use in preparing a campaign biography. "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Volume I., page 639. The Century Co.]

LINCOLN'S POPULARITY IN SANGAMON.

It took some four weeks to build the raft, and in that period Lincoln succeeded in captivating the entire village by his story-telling. It was the custom in Sangamon for the "men-folks" to gather at noon and in the evening, when resting, in a convenient lane near the mill. They had rolled out a long peeled log on which they lounged while they whittled and talked. After Mr. Lincoln came to town the men would start him to story-telling as soon as he appeared at the assembly ground. So irresistibly droll were his "yarns" that, says Mr. Roll, "whenever he'd end up in his unexpected way the boys on the log would whoop and roll off." The result of the rolling off was to polish the log like a mirror. Long after Lincoln had disappeared from Sangamon "Abe's log" remained, and until it had rotted away people pointed it out, and repeated the droll stories of the stranger.

AN EXCITING ADVENTURE.

The flatboat was done in about a month, and Lincoln and his friends prepared to leave Sangamon. Before he started, however, he was the hero of an adventure so thrilling that he won new laurels in the community. Mr. Roll, who was a witness to the whole exciting scene, tells the story as follows:

"It was the spring following the winter of the deep snow.[A] Walter Carman, John Seamon, myself, and at times others of the Carman boys, had helped Abe in building the boat, and when he had finished we went to work to make a dug-out, or canoe, to be used as a small boat with the flat. We found a suitable log about an eighth of a mile up the river, and with our axes went to work under Lincoln's direction. The river was very high, fairly 'booming.' After the dug-out was ready to launch we took it to the edge of the water, and made ready to 'let her go,' when Walter Carman and John Seamon jumped in as the boat struck the water, each one anxious to be the first to get a ride. As they shot out from the shore they found they were unable to make any headway against the strong current. Carman had the paddle, and Seamon was in the stern of the boat. Lincoln shouted to them to 'head upstream' and 'work back to shore,' but they found themselves powerless against the stream. At last they began to pull for the wreck of an old flatboat, the first ever built on the Sangamon, which had sunk and gone to pieces, leaving one of the stanchions sticking above the water. Just as they reached it Seamon made a grab, and caught hold of the stanchion, when the canoe capsized, leaving Seamon clinging to the old timber, and throwing Carman into the stream. It carried him down with the speed of a mill-race, Lincoln raised his voice above the roar of the flood, and yelled to Carman to swim for an elm-tree which stood almost in the channel, which the action of the high water changed. Carman, being a good swimmer, succeeded in catching a branch, and pulled himself up out of the water, which was very cold, and had almost chilled him to death; and there he sat, shivering and chattering in the tree. Lincoln, seeing Carman safe, called out to Seamon to let go the stanchion and swim for the tree. With some hesitation he obeyed, and struck out, while Lincoln cheered, and directed him from the bank. As Seamon neared the tree he made one grab for a branch, and, missing it, went under the water. Another desperate lunge was successful, and he climbed up beside Carman. Things were pretty exciting now, for there were two men in the tree, and the boat was gone.

"It was a cold, raw April day, and there was great danger of the men becoming benumbed and falling back into the water. Lincoln called out to them to keep their spirits up and he would save them. The village had been alarmed by this time, and many people had come down to the bank. Lincoln procured a rope, and tied it to a log. He called all hands to come and help roll the log into the water, and after this had been done, he, with the assistance of several others, towed it some distance up the stream. A daring young fellow by the name of 'Jim' Dorrell then took his seat on the end of the log, and it was pushed out into the current, with the expectation that it would be carried downstream against the tree where Seamon and Carman were. The log was well directed, and went straight to the tree; but Jim, in his impatience to help his friends, fell a victim to his good intentions. Making a frantic grab at a branch, he raised himself off the log, and it was swept from under him by the raging water, and he soon joined the other two victims upon their forlorn perch. The excitement on shore increased, and almost the whole population of the village gathered on the river bank. Lincoln had the log pulled up the stream, and securing another piece of rope, called to the men in the tree to catch it if they could when he should reach the tree. He then straddled the log himself, and gave the word to push out into the stream. When he dashed into the tree, he threw the rope over the stump of a broken limb, and let it play until he broke the speed of the log, and gradually drew it back to the tree, holding it there until the three now nearly frozen men had climbed down and seated themselves astride. He then gave orders to the people on the shore to hold fast to the end of the rope which was tied to the log, and leaving his rope in the tree he turned the log adrift, and the force of the current acting against the taut rope swung the log around against the bank, and all 'on board' were saved. The excited people, who had watched the dangerous experiment with alternate hope and fear, now broke into cheers for Abe Lincoln and praises for his brave act. This adventure made quite a hero of him along the Sangamon, and the people never tired of telling of the exploit."

[Footnote A: 1830-1831. "The winter of the deep snow" is the date which is the starting point in all calculations of time for the early settlers of Illinois, and the circumstance from which the old settlers of Sangamon County receive the name by which they are generally known, "Snowbirds."]

A SECOND ADVENTURE.