The Beginner's American History Part 27

245. The new log cabin with four sides to it; how the furniture was made; "Abe's" bed in the loft.--The Lincoln family stayed in that shed for about a year; then they moved into a new log cabin which had four sides to it. They seem to have made a new set of furniture for the new house. "Abe's" father got a large log, split it in two, smoothed off the flat side, bored holes in the under side and drove in four stout sticks for legs: that made the table. They had no chairs,--it would have been too much trouble to make the backs,--but they had three-legged stools, which Thomas Lincoln made with an axe, just as he did the table; perhaps "Abe" helped him drive in the legs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOME-MADE FURNITURE.]

In one corner of the loft of this cabin the boy had a big bag of dry leaves for his bed. Whenever he felt like having a new bed, all that he had to do was to go out in the woods and gather more leaves.

He worked about the place during the day, helping his father and mother. For his supper he had a piece of cornbread. After he had eaten it, he climbed up to his loft in the dark, by a kind of ladder of wooden pins driven into the logs. Five minutes after that he was fast asleep on his bed of sweet-smelling leaves, and was dreaming of hunting c.o.o.ns, or of building big bonfires out of brush.[3]

[Footnote 3: Brush: bushes and limbs of trees.]

246. Death of "Abe's" mother; the lonely grave in the woods; what Abraham Lincoln said of his mother after he had grown to be a man; what "Abe's" new mother said of him.--"Abe's" mother was not strong, and before they had been in their new log cabin a year she fell sick and died. She was buried on the farm. "Abe" used to go out and sit by her lonely grave in the forest and cry. It was the first great sorrow that had ever touched the boy's heart. After he had grown to be a man, he said with eyes full of tears to a friend with whom he was talking: "G.o.d bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ABE" LEARNING TO USE HIS AXE.]

At the end of a year Thomas Lincoln married again. The new wife that he brought home was a kind-hearted and excellent woman. She did all she could to make the poor, ragged, barefooted boy happy. After he had grown up and become famous, 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."

247. The school in the woods; the new teacher; reading by the open fire; how "Abe" used the fire-shovel.--There was a log schoolhouse in the woods quite a distance off, and there "Abe" went for a short time. At the school he learned to read and write a little, but after a while he found a new teacher, that was--himself. When the rest of the family had gone to bed, he would sit up and read his favorite books by the light of the great blazing logs heaped up on the open fire. He had not more than half a dozen books in all. They were "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," AEsop's[4] Fables, the Bible, a Life of Washington, and a small History of the United States.

The boy read these books over and over till he knew a great deal of them by heart and could repeat whole pages from them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WRITING BY THE FIRE.]

Part of his evenings he spent in writing and ciphering. Thomas Lincoln was so poor that he could seldom afford to buy paper and pens for his son, so the boy had to get on without them. He used to take the back of the broad wooden fire-shovel to write on and a piece of charcoal for a pencil. When he had covered the shovel with words or with sums in arithmetic, he would shave it off clean and begin over again. If "Abe's" father complained that the shovel was getting thin, the boy would go out into the woods, cut down a tree, and make a new one; for as long as the woods lasted, fire-shovels and furniture were cheap.

[Footnote 4: AEsop (E'sop): the name of a noted writer of fables.

Here is one of AEsop's fables: An old frog thought that he could blow himself up to be as big as an ox. So he drew in his breath and puffed himself out prodigiously. "Am I big enough now?" he asked his son.

"No," said his son; "you don't begin to be as big as an ox yet." Then he tried again, and swelled himself out still more. "How's that?"

he asked. "Oh, it's no use trying," said his son, "you can't do it."

"But I will," said the old frog. With that he drew in his breath with all his might and puffed himself up to such an enormous size that he suddenly burst.

Moral: Don't try to be bigger than you can.]

248. What Lincoln could do at seventeen; what he was at nineteen; his strength.--By the time the lad was seventeen he could write a good hand, do hard examples in long division, and spell better than any one else in the county. Once in a while he wrote a little piece of his own about something which interested him; when the neighbors heard it read, they would say, "The world can't beat it."

At nineteen Abraham Lincoln had reached his full height. He stood nearly six feet four inches, barefooted. He was a kind of good-natured giant. No one in the neighborhood could strike an axe as deep into a tree as he could, and few, if any, were equal to him in strength. It takes a powerful man to put a barrel of flour into a wagon without help, and there is not one in a hundred who can lift a barrel of cider off the ground; but it is said that young Lincoln could stoop down, lift a barrel on to his knees, and drink from the bung-hole.

249. Young Lincoln makes a voyage to New Orleans; how he handled the robbers.--At this time a neighbor hired Abraham to go with his son to New Orleans. The two young men were to take a flat-boat loaded with corn and other produce down the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was called a voyage of about eighteen hundred miles, and it would take between three and four weeks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINCOLN ON THE FLAT-BOAT GOING DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.]

Young Lincoln was greatly pleased with the thought of making such a trip. He had never been away any distance from home, and, as he told his father, he felt that he wanted to see something more of the world. His father made no objection, but, as he bade his son good by, he said, Take care that in trying to see the world you don't see the bottom of the Mississippi.

The two young men managed to get the boat through safely. But one night a gang of negroes came on board, intending to rob them of part of their cargo. Lincoln soon showed the robbers he could handle a club as vigorously as he could an axe, and the rascals, bruised and bleeding, were glad to get off with their lives.

250. The Lincolns move to Illinois; what Abraham did; hunting frolics; how Abraham chopped; how he bought his clothes.--Not long after young Lincoln's return, his father moved to Illinois.[5] It was a two weeks' journey through the woods with ox-teams. Abraham helped his father build a comfortable log cabin; then he and a man named John Hanks split walnut rails, and fenced in fifteen acres of land for a cornfield.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LOG CABIN IN ILLINOIS WHICH LINCOLN HELPED HIS FATHER BUILD.]

That part of the country had but few settlers, and it was still full of wild beasts. When the men got tired of work and wanted a frolic, they had a grand wolf-hunt. First, a tall pole was set up in a clearing;[6] next, the hunters in the woods formed a great circle of perhaps ten miles in extent. Then they began to move nearer and nearer together, beating the bushes and yelling with all their might.

The frightened wolves, deer, and other wild creatures inside of the circle of hunters were driven to the pole in the clearing; there they were shot down in heaps.

Young Lincoln was not much of a hunter, but he always tried to do his part. Yet, after all, he liked the axe better than he did the rifle. He would start off before light in the morning and walk to his work in the woods, five or six miles away. There he would chop steadily all day. The neighbors knew, when they hired him, that he wouldn't sit down on the first log he came to and fall asleep. Once when he needed a new pair of trousers, he made a bargain for them with a Mrs. Nancy Miller. She agreed to make him a certain number of yards of tow cloth,[7] and dye it brown with walnut bark. For every yard she made, Lincoln bound himself to split four hundred good fence-rails for her. In this way he made his axe pay for all his clothes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINCOLN SPLITTING LOGS FOR RAILS.]

[Footnote 5: Illinois: he moved to a farm on the North Fork (or branch) of the Sangamon River, Macon County, Illinois. Springfield, the capital of the state, is in the next county west.]

[Footnote 6: Clearing: an open s.p.a.ce made in a forest.]

[Footnote 7: Tow cloth: a kind of coa.r.s.e, cheap, but very strong cloth, made of flax or hemp.]

251. Lincoln hires out to tend store; the gang of ruffians in New Salem; Jack Armstrong and "Tall Abe."--The year after young Lincoln came of age he hired out to tend a grocery and variety store in New Salem, Illinois.[8] There was a gang of young ruffians in that neighborhood who made it a point to pick a fight with every stranger.

Sometimes they mauled him black and blue; sometimes they amused themselves with nailing him up in a hogshead and rolling him down a hill. The leader of this gang was a fellow named Jack Armstrong.

He made up his mind that he would try his hand on "Tall Abe," as Lincoln was called. He attacked Lincoln, and he was so astonished at what happened to him that he never wanted to try it again. From that time Abraham Lincoln had no better friends than young Armstrong and the Armstrong family. Later on we shall see what he was able to do for them.

[Footnote 8: New Salem is on the Sangamon River, in Menard County, about twenty miles northwest of Springfield, the capital of Illinois.]

252. Lincoln's faithfulness in little things; the six cents; "Honest Abe."--In his work in the store Lincoln soon won everybody's respect and confidence. He was faithful in little things, and in that way he made himself able to deal with great ones.

Once a woman made a mistake in paying for something she had bought, and gave the young man six cents too much. He did not notice it at the time, but after his customer had gone he saw that she had overpaid him. That night, after the store was closed, Lincoln walked to the woman's house, some five or six miles out of the village, and paid her back the six cents. It was such things as this that first made the people give him the name of "Honest Abe."

253. The Black Hawk War; the Indian's handful of dry leaves; what Lincoln did in the war.--The next year Lincoln went to fight the Indians in what was called the Black Hawk War. The people in that part of the country had been expecting the war; for, some time before, an Indian had walked up to a settler's cabin and said, "Too much white man." He then threw a handful of dry leaves into the air, to show how he and his warriors were coming to scatter the white men. He never came, but a noted chief named Black Hawk, who had been a friend of Tec.u.mseh's,[9] made an attempt to drive out the settlers, and get back the lands which certain Indians had sold them.

Lincoln said that the only battles he fought in this war were with the mosquitoes. He never killed a single Indian, but he saved the life of one old savage. He seems to have felt just as well satisfied with himself for doing that as though he had shot him through the head.

[Footnote 9: Tec.u.mseh: See paragraph 202.]

254. Lincoln becomes postmaster and surveyor; how he studied law; what the people thought of him as a lawyer.--After Lincoln returned from the war he was made postmaster of New Salem. He also found time to do some surveying and to begin the study of law. On hot summer mornings he might be seen lying on his back, on the gra.s.s, under a big tree, reading a law-book; as the shade moved round, Lincoln would move with it, so that by sundown he had travelled nearly round the tree.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINCOLN READING LAW.]

When he began to practise law, everybody who knew him had confidence in him. Other men might be admired because they were smart, but Lincoln was respected because he was honest. When he said a thing, people knew that it was because he believed it, and they knew, too, that he could not be hired to say what he did not believe. That gave him immense influence.

255. The Armstrong murder trial; how Lincoln saved young Armstrong from being hanged.--But Lincoln was as keen as he was truthful and honest. A man was killed in a fight near where Lincoln had lived, and one of Jack Armstrong's[10] brothers was arrested for the murder.

Everybody thought that he was guilty, and felt sure that he would be hanged. Lincoln made some inquiry about the case, and made up his mind that the prisoner did not kill the man.

Mrs. Armstrong was too poor to hire a lawyer to defend her son, but Lincoln wrote to her that he would gladly do it for nothing.

When the day of the trial came, the chief witness was sure that he saw young Armstrong strike the man dead. Lincoln questioned him closely. He asked him when it was that he saw the murder committed.

The witness said that it was in the evening, at a certain hour, and that he saw it all clearly because there was a bright moon. Are you sure? asked Lincoln. Yes, replied the witness. Do you swear to it?