Abraham Lincoln. William Eleroy Curtis

      Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

      ROCK SPRING FARM, KENTUCKY, WHERE ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS BORN

      From a photograph taken in September, 1895. The cabin in which Lincoln was born is seen to the right, in the background

      The death of Mrs. Lincoln left the child Sarah, then only eleven years old, to care for the household, and, with the assistance of her brother, she struggled through the next year until the autumn of 1819, when their father returned to Hodgensville and married Sally Bush Johnston, a widow with three children (John, Sarah, and Matilda), whom he had courted before he married Nancy Hanks. She seems to have been a woman of uncommon energy and nobility of character, and in after-life her step-son paid her a worthy tribute when he said that the strongest influence which stimulated and guided him in his ambition came from her and from his own mother. Under her management conditions improved. She brought a little property and some household goods into the family as well as three children, stimulated her husband to industry, and taught his children habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. There was never any friction between her and her step-children, and her own brood, John, Sarah, and Matilda, were received cordially and treated with affection. Nor in their after-lives was any distinction made by either of the parents. The step-mother recognized in Abraham a boy of unusual talent, and encouraged and assisted him by every means within her power.

      Abraham's life was spent at hard labor. He was a boy of unusual stature and, from the time he was ten years old, did a man's work. He learned all the tricks in the trades that a pioneer's son must know; hired out upon the neighboring farms when there was nothing for him to do at home, and his wages (twenty-five cents a day) were paid to his father. He cared little for amusement, and hunting, which was the chief recreation of young men of his age, had no attractions for him. In his brief autobiography, which was prepared for the newspapers the day after his nomination for the Presidency, he says—

      "A flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through the cracks and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game." He joined in the rude amusements and sports of the community like other boys and enjoyed them. His quick intelligence, ready sympathy, wit, humor, and generous disposition made him a great favorite. He was the best talker and story-teller in the neighborhood. His tall stature and unusual strength made him a leader in athletic sports, and his studious habits and retentive memory gave him an advantage among his comrades, a few of whom had a little, but the most of them no education. His less gifted comrades recognized his ability and superiority; they learned to accept his opinions and to respect his judgment. He became an instructor as well as a leader, and the local traditions represent him as a sort of intellectual phenomenon, whose wit, anecdotes, doggerel verses, practical jokes, muscular strength, and skill made him the wonder of the community and are a part of the early history of that section.

      When he was sixteen he operated a ferry-boat at the mouth of Anderson's Creek, transporting passengers across the Ohio River, and it was then that he earned the first money that he could claim as his own. One evening in the White House, while he was President, he told the story to several members of his Cabinet, and Mr. Secretary Seward gives the following account of it:

      "I was contemplating my new flat-boat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any particular, when two men came down to the shore in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different boats singled out mine, and asked: 'Who owns this?' I answered, somewhat modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks out to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was glad to have the chance of earning something. I supposed that each of them would give me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flat-boat, and the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamer.

       "They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks and put them on deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar and threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. Gentlemen, you may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me a trifle; but it was the most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day—that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed fairer and wider before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that time."

      When he was nineteen Mr. Gentry, the most prominent man in the neighborhood, from whom the town of Gentryville was named, and who kept the "store," embarked in a new enterprise, and sent Abraham with his son Allen upon a flat-boat to New Orleans with a load of bacon, corn meal, and other provisions, paying him eight dollars a month and his passage home on a steamboat. Thus the future President obtained his first glimpse of the world outside the Indiana forest, and the impressions left upon his mind by this experience were never effaced. It was the beginning of a new life for him and the awakening of new ambitions.

      "He was a hired man merely," wrote Lincoln of himself nearly thirty years afterwards, "and he and a son of the owner, without any other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the 'cargo load,' as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar-coast, and one night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the mêlée, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then 'cut cable,' 'weighed anchor,' and left."

       The prairies of Illinois were becoming a great temptation to pioneers in those days, and the restless disposition of Thomas Lincoln could not be restrained; so he and several of his relatives joined the migration, making a party of thirteen. Lincoln himself tells the story in these words:

      "March 1st, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year, his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his step-mother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois. Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams, and Abraham drove one of the teams. They reached the county of Macon, and stopped there some time within the same month of March. His father and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timber land and prairie, about ten miles westerly from Decatur. 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 in the same year."

      Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

      ROCK SPRING ON THE FARM WHERE LINCOLN WAS BORN

      From a photograph taken in September, 1895

      The sons-in-law of his step-mother referred to were Dennis Hanks and Levi Hall, who had married Sarah and Matilda, Lincoln's step-sisters. Hanks was a son of the Joseph Hanks with whom Thomas Lincoln learned the carpenter's trade in Kentucky. Another son, John Hanks, was a member of the family, and it was he who appeared at the State convention at Decatur, May 9, 1860, bearing two weather-worn fence-rails decorated with streamers and a banner inscribed to the effect that they were from the identical lot of three thousand rails which Lincoln had cut on the Sangamon River in 1830. This dramatic scene was devised by Richard J. Oglesby, afterwards Governor and United States Senator, and one of Lincoln's most ardent admirers and faithful supporters. Little did Lincoln dream when he was splitting rails in the walnut woods with John Hanks that he and his companion would appear in a drama of national interest with samples of their handiwork to electrify the country with enthusiasm and confer upon the long-legged farmer boy the sobriquet of "The Illinois Rail-Splitter."

      Delegates had been elected to the second National Republican Convention to be held at Chicago a week later, when Mr. Oglesby arose and announced in a serious and mysterious manner that an old citizen of Macon County had something to present to the Convention. Then, with great dramatic effect, John Hanks entered, bearing the relics which were to become the symbols of the National Convention. The assembly was transformed into a tumult, and Lincoln was brought to the platform, where, when order could