Part 1 (1/2)

The Life of Abraham Lincoln

by Henry Ketcham

PREFACE

The question will naturally be raised, Why should there be another Life of Lincoln? This may be met by a counter question, Will there ever be a time in the near future when there will _not_ be another Life of Lincoln? There is always a new class of students and a new enrol people pass frorade of our public schools Other thousands are growing up into manhood and womanhood These are of a different constituency frorandfathers who remeer generation,” writes Carl Schurz, ”Abrahaure, which, in the haze of historic distance, grows to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in distinctness of outline and figure” The last clause of this re, his outline and figure are diue There are to-day professors and presidents of colleges, legislators of proes, literary men, and successful business men, to whom Lincoln is a tradition It cannot be expected that a person born after the year (say) 1855, could remember Lincoln more than as a name Such an one's ideas are made up not from his remembrance and appreciation of events as they occurred, but from what he has read and heard about thereatthe facts of Lincoln's life is, and probably will always be, the History by his secretaries, Nicolay and Hay This is worthily supplemented by the splendid volureat value Special mention should be made of the essay by Carl Schurz, which is classic

The author has consulted freely all the books on the subject he could lay his hands on In this volume there is no attempt to write a history of the times in which Lincoln lived and worked Such historical events as have been narrated were selected solely because they illustrated soraphy the single purpose has been to present the living man with such distinctness of outline that the readeracquainted with hi this volume, has a vivid realization of Lincoln as a man, the author will be fully repaid

To achieve this purpose in brief compass, much has been omitted Some of the material omitted has probably been of a value fully equal to some that has been inserted This could not well be avoided But if the reader shall here acquire interest enough in the subject to continue the study of this great, good man, this little book will have served its purpose

H K

WESTFIELD, NEW JERSEY, February, 1901

CHAPTER I

THE WILD WEST

At the beginning of the twentieth century there is, strictly speaking, no frontier to the United States At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the larger part of the country was frontier In any portion of the country to-day, in the rees and hamlets, on the enormous farms of the Dakotas or the vast ranches of California, one is certain to find some, if not many, of the modern appliances of civilization such as were not dreao Aladdin hi ter years of the nineteenth century So, too, it requires an extraordinary effort of the is in the opening years of that century

The first quarter of the century closed with the year 1825 At that date Lincoln was nearly seventeen years old The deepest impressions of life are apt to be received very early, and it is certain that the influences which are felt previous to seventeen years of age have o back to the period named, we can tell with sufficient accuracy ere the circuh we cannot precisely tell what he had, we can confidently nas which in this day we class as the necessities of life, which he had to do without, for the simple reason that they had not then been invented or discovered

In the first place, we must bear in mind that he lived in the woods

The West of that day was not wild in the sense of being wicked, criminal, ruffian Morally, and possibly intellectually, the people of that region would compare with the rest of the country of that day or of this day There was little schooling and no literary training But the woodsion ild in the sense that it was al from the mountains in the East to the prairies in the West, were almost unbroken and were the abode of wild birds and wild beasts

Bears, deer, wild-cats, raccoons, wild turkeys, wild pigeons, wild ducks and similar creatures abounded on every hand

Consider now the sparseness of the population Kentucky has an area of 40,000 square miles One year after Lincoln's birth, the total population, white and colored, was 406,511, or an average of ten persons--say less than two families--to the square mile Indiana has an area of 36,350 square e of one person to one and one-half square miles; in 1820 it contained 147,173 inhabitants, or about four to the square mile; in 1825 the population was about 245,000, or less than seven to the square mile

The capital city, Indianapolis, which is to-day of surpassing beauty, was not built nor thought of when the boy Lincoln moved into the State

Illinois, with its more than 56,000 square miles of territory, harbored in 1810 only 12,282 people; in 1820, only 55,211, or less than one to the square rown a trifle over 100,000 or less than two to the square mile

It will thus be seen that up to his youth, Lincoln dwelt only in the wildest of the oods, where the animals from the chipmunk to the bear were much more numerous, and probably more at home, than man

There were few roads of any kind, and certainly none that could be called good For the mud of Indiana and Illinois is very deep and very tenacious There were good saddle-horses, a sufficient number of oxen, and carts that were rude and aard No locomotives, no bicycles, no automobiles The first railway in Indiana was constructed in 1847, and it was, to say the least, a very pries, there e would be only a waste on those roads and in that forest

The only pen was the goose-quill, and the ink was hoood in forest, and books were like angels' visits, few and far between