ABRAHAM   LINCOLN

By  R.K.    &    M.I.R.  Polkinghorne

Abraham Lincoln was born in a little log cabin set in the midst of a barren and desolate wilderness in the State of Kentucky, on February 12, 1809.  The States of America were spreading westward through brave pioneers. Some were quite new frontier towns in Lincoln's time, where settlers were beginning to make homes, but in the east there were fine towns and buildings, and much cultivated land

Abraham, or Abe, as he was called, heard many tales about the Ted Indians, but now they had gone farther north and west, and were less often to be seen. In the wild forests and country round there lived many wild creatures, beasts and birds, especially fierce turkeys.

Abe and his sister helped their parents. Abe at six could do all sorts of useful chores, fetch water, use a small axe, and gather sticks for fires, which were so much needed on cold winter days.

His father, Thomas Lincoln, was inclined to live a roving life and not settle down in one place. He had never learned to read or write. He had no use for reading or writing. As the farm in Kentucky was not very successful, Thomas decided to try his luck in the new State of Indiana. It meant a journey of about a hundred miles. He took most of their belongings by boat. His wife and two children went on foot with the help of two horses, which carried some bedding, and on whose backs a tired child could sometimes have a ride.

The first thing they did when they reached the place where they were going to live was to build some sort of shelter. The first house had a roof, but it was enclosed on only three sides, so big fires had to be kept burning for warmth and to keep off wild creatures. Abe helped all he could, even using a small axe.

When more land had been cleared corn and vegetables were planted, and a much better house built, with a proper door and window. It had a strong wooden fence, or stockade, around it as a protection. Inside it they were safe. Abe helped to keep the enclosure tidy, and even to make chairs or tables.  

As soon as he was eight his father began to teach him to use a gun. This delighted Abe.

One day some turkeys came near the stockade, for there were many in the woods around. He asked his mother if he might try to shoot one. She fixed the gun in one of the loopholes for guns and told him to be careful. The turkeys began to strut towards the stockade. Bang! Went the gun, and backward fell Abe. He quickly jumped up and rushed out. There on the ground lay a big turkey!

"I've killed him!" shouted Abe. "What a monster!" Of course, it was really an accident, and the fault of the turkey for strutting in front of the bullet! But all the same it was a great event for Abe.

One of the pleasures of those early days was hearing his mother reading aloud form the Bible every Sunday and sometimes on other days. It was Abe's first story-book, and, indeed, reading-book.

His first great grief was the sudden death of his good mother. Sarah, his sister, was only eleven years old, and could not manage the housework very well, although Abe was very handy and helped her all he could. It was then that his father brought him books from the house of a man for whom he often did some work—Pilgrim's Progress, Aesop's Fables and Robinson Crusoe. These books opened a new world for him.

Then life became brighter. Thomas Lincoln married again. The new stepmother brought comfort with here. She was a widow with seven children, and they became a merry family. She soon made the log cabin very comfortable with her furniture, and thought of many improvements. She insisted on all the children going to school; she saw that Abe dressed properly, and not in any odd clothes. The old schoolmaster thought Abe a very intelligent boy and tried to teach him to behave like a gentleman. At fifteen Abe was six feet high, and he did not know in the least how to deal with his long arms and legs!

When he became a man he earned his living in a variety of ways-by splitting rails for fences, keeping a country store, acting as postmaster and surveyor, and working on the river as a boatman. On one of his river trips he went down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where he saw something of slavery, which made a lasting impression on him. He admired the strange buildings he saw in New Orleans, a half-Spanish town.

He was popular with many people, and when he was twenty-five his neighbors elected him to a term in the Illinois Legislature. He then read law, and was admitted to the Bar at the age of twenty-eight. His hard work at law developed in him a great power of lucid argument. The Southern States had Negro slaves who worked in the cotton-fields. In the Northern States the idea of slavery was not popular, and Lincoln spoke eloquently against it.

In 1861 Lincoln had become so popular in the Northern States that he was chosen President of the U.S.A, but the Southern States were not pleased, and they chose their own President, Jefferson Davis. But Lincoln and many other Americans would not allow the Southern States to secede. A Civil War (1861-65) was fought. The fighting went on over a vast area, across the woods and hills of Tennessee and Virginia and along the Mississippi. After four years of war Lincoln and the Union won.

A few days after the war Lincoln was shot by a mad man at a Washington theatre (April 1865), just as he was having almost his first moments of his real peace since the struggle began. "And now," as some one who was with him said, "he belongs to the ages."

Like Washington, Lincoln showed himself a true patriot. "Let us have faith," Lincoln said, "that right rules might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we see it."

He was a unique man because with little formal education he became one of his country's greatest orators. His humor, his patience under misunderstandings and unjust attacks, his courage when others wanted to yield, his steady grasp of events when the fate of his country seemed desperate, the "matchless beauty" and eloquence of his Gettysburg Address, made him a man never to be forgotten. The whole world recognized his greatness. Today in the most prominent places in London and Manchester there stand monuments to the great American.