Lincoln's Autobiographies
December 20, 1859
I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, regardless of the families – second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was a Hanks family name, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in the counties of Macon, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 2, where, a year or two later, was killed by Indians, not in battle, but secretly, when he was working to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, it was as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.
My father, the death of his father, was not six years old, and grew up literally [sic] with no education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We arrived at our new home on time when the state entered the Union. It was a wild region with many bears and other wildlife, even in the forest. There I grew up. There some schools, so you get the call, but no qualification was required once a teacher beyond "readin, writin and cipherin" to the rule three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to stay in the neighborhood, which was regarded as a wizzard [sic]. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition education. Of course, when I came of age I do not know much. But somehow, I could read, write and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. Not I have been to school since then. Now I have little progress on this store of education, I have gathered from time to time under the pressure of necessity.
I grew up to farm work, which continued until I was twenty years. At twenty years since I came to Illinois, and spent the first year in Macon County. Then I came to New-Salem (at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County), where they spent a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came Black-Hawk war, and I chose was a Captain of Volunteers – a success which gave me more pleasure than any I've had since then. I was the campaign was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten – the only time I have been beaten by the people. The next, and three subsequent elections Biennial, I was elected by active canvasses – I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is well known.
If any personal description of me is thought desirable, one can say, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, almost in the lean, weighing an average of one hundred eighty pounds, dark complexion, thick black hair and gray eyes – no other marks or brands recollected.
June 1860
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, then in Hardin, now in the more recently formed county of La Rue, Kentucky. His father, Thomas, and his grandfather, Abraham, born in Rockingham County, Virginia, where his ancestors had come from Berks County, Pennsylvania. His lineage has been again detected no father than this. The family were originally Quakers, though in later times have been shed from the customs peculiar to that people. The grandfather, Abraham, had four brothers – Isaac, Jacob, John and Thomas. To our knowledge, the descendants of Jacob and John are still in Virginia. Isaac went to a place near where Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and join, and their descendants are in that region. Thomas came to Kentucky, and died after many years there, where their descendants went to Missouri. Abraham, the grandfather of the subject of this sketch, came to Kentucky, and was killed by Indians about the year 1784. He left a widow, three sons and two daughters. The son more, Mordecai, remained in Kentucky until late in life, when he moved to Hancock County, Illinois, where he died soon after, and where several of his descendants remain. The second son, Joshua, remove in one day in advance to a place in Blue River, now in Hancock County, Indiana, but no recent information his or her family has been obtained. The older sister, Mary, married Ralph Crum, and some of their descendants are now known to be in Breckenridge County, Kentucky. The second sister, Nancy, married William Brumfield, and her family are not known to have left Kentucky, but no recent information from them. Thomas, the youngest son, and father the matter at hand, by the early death of his father, and very narrow circumstances of his mother, even in childhood was a wandering worker-boy, and grew up literally uneducated. He never did more in the way of writing bunglingly to write his own name. Before he was grown up spending a year as a pawn by his uncle Isaac in Watauga, a branch of Holston River. Back in Kentucky, and having reached its twenty-eighth year, he married Nancy Hanks – mother of the matter at hand – in the year 1806. She was also born in Virginia, and part of his family by the name of Hanks, and other names, now reside in Coles, in Macon, and Adams Counties, Illinois, and also in Iowa The issue before us has no brother or sister or half-blood. He had a sister older than himself, who was grown and married, but died For many years, leaving no children, and a brother younger than himself, who died in infancy. Before leaving Kentucky, he and his sister were sent, for short periods, to ABC schools, the first led by Zachary Riney, and the second by Caleb Hazel.
At this time his father lived in Knob Creek, on the way to Bardstown, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, at a point three or three and a half miles south or southwest of Atherton's Ferry, in Rolling Fork. From this instead moved to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in the fall of 1816, wiping the remains of wood was the great task ahead. Abraham, though very young, was large his time, and had an ax to put in their hands at once, and that even within the twenty-third year was almost constantly handling this very useful tool – Which, of course, in plowing and harvesting. In Abraham had an early start as a hunter, who never was much improved afterwards. A few days before the end its eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham with a rifle gun, standing inside a a crack shot and killed one of them. He has never thrown from a trigger on any larger game. In the fall of 1818 his mother died, and a year later his father married Mrs. Sally Johnston, at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a widow with three children from his first marriage. She proved to be a good and kind mother to Abraham, and continues living in Coles County, Illinois. There were no children of this second marriage. his father's residence continued at the same place in Indiana until 1830. While here Abraham ABC went to school for Littles, kept successively by Andrew Crawford, – Sweeney, year. He was never in a college or academy as a student, and never inside a school or academy building until it had a law license. What he has in the way of education has been recovered. After twenty-three and had been separated from his father, he studied English grammar – imperfectly, of course, but to speak and write as well as it does now. He studied and nearly mastered the six books Euclid since he was a member of Congress. Laments his lack of education, and does what he can to fill the gap. In its tenth year was kicked by a horse, and apparently was killed by the trip. The nature of the "load-load" as it was called, became necessary for them to stay and trade along the coast of sugar, and one night they were attacked by seven Negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the melee, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then "cut cable "," set sail ", and left.
March 1, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-one, his father and family, with families of two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, some time in the month of March. His father and his family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timber and prairie, about ten miles west of Decatur. They built a log cabin in which they took, and made sufficient of rails to ten acres near land, fenced and broke the ground and raised a corn crop planted in it discouraged, so much so that the output of the county determined. They were, however, during the following winter, it was the winter of the much-celebrated "snow" of Illinois. During that winter Abraham, along with his stepmother's son, John D. Johnston and John Hanks, but residing in Macon County, was hired to Denton Offutt to take a barge of Beardstown, 1831, the county was flooded to make Land travel default, to avoid difficulties which bought a large canoe, and came down the Sangamon River in it. This is the time and manner of the first inning of Abraham Sangamon County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but learned from him that he had failed in getting a boat at Beardstown. This led to hire their own to it for twelve dollars per month each, and get the wood from the trees and the construction of a boat in the Old Town on the Sangamon Sangamon River, seven miles northwest Springfield, which boat they took to New Orleans, substantially on the old contract.
During this well-known boat company with Offutt, formerly a full unknown, conceived a taste for Abraham, and believing he could turn to account, he contracted with him to act as secretary to him, on his return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and a mill in New Salem, then in Sangamon, now in Menard County. Hanks had not gone to New Orleans, but having a family, and susceptible to be detained from home longer than first expected, had returned from St. Louis. He is the same John Hanks who now engineers the "RU" in Decatur, and is a cousin of the mother of Abraham. Abraham's father, with his family and the others mentioned, had, in pursuance of their intention, removed from Macon to the county Coles. John D. Johnston, the stepmother's son, was with them, and Abraham stopped indefinitely and for the first time, as it were, by himself in New Salem, before mentioned. This was in July 1831. This quickly became friends and acquaintances. In less than a year business Offutt was not – there was almost – when the Black Hawk War of 1832 broke out. Abraham joined a volunteer company, and to his own surprise, was elected captain of it. He says he has had no success in life that gave much satisfaction. He went to the campaign, served near three months, met the normal difficulties of this type of issue but was not in battle. It currently owns, in Iowa, the ground on which his own warrants for the service were located. Upon returning from the campaign, and encouraged by his great popularity among his immediate neighbors, the man of clay, and fall to the compound after a majority of 115 to General Jackson over Mr. Clay. This was the only time Abraham was ever beaten a direct popular vote. He was now without means and out of business, but was eager to stay with friends he had been treated so generously, especially in what he had nothing to go elsewhere. He studied what to do – think of learning the blacksmith trade – thought of having to study law – rather thought he could not succeed in that, without a better education. Before long, strangely enough, a man offered to sell, and sold to Abraham and another as poor like him, an old stock of goods on credit. They opened as merchants, the politics of opposition. The store went out. The inspector of Sangamon offered to depute Abraham that part of the work that was within his part of the county. He accepted, from a compass and chain, studied Flint and Gibson a little, and went at it. This bread of contract, and kept soul and body together. The election of 1834 came, and he was elected to the legislature by the choice maxims borrowed books of Stuart, took it home with him, and entered it for real. He studied with nobody. Still mixed in the topography of the maintenance costs and clothing bills. When the April 15, 1837, he moved to Springfield, and commenced practice – his old friend Stuart taking him into partnership. March 3, 1837, for a protest entered in the "Illinois House Journal" of that date, on pages 817 and 818, Abraham, with Dan Stone, another representative of Sangamon, briefly defined its position on the issue of slavery, and the extent to which goes, was then the undersigned protest against the approval thereof.
"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation by the institution of slavery in the different that power should not be exercised unless at the request of the people of the District.
"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the resolutions before is its reason for entering this protest.
"Dan Stone,
"A Lincoln,
"Representatives of the Province of Sangamon."
In 1838 and 1840, the party of Lincoln voted for him as president, but being in the minority who was not elected. From 1840 he refused reelection to the legislature. He was on the Harrison electoral ticket process in 1840, and the clay in 1844, and spent much time and work, both in the paintings. In November 1842, was married to Mary daughter of Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky. They have three living children, all sons, one born in 1843, one in 1850, and 1853. They lost one, who was born in 1846.
In 1846 he was elected to the lower House of Congress, and it was only a quarter, from December 1847, and ending with the inauguration of Taylor, in March 1849. All the battles of the war with Mexico had been fought before Mr. Lincoln sat in Congress, but the U.S. military was still in Mexico, and the treaty Peace was not fully and formally ratified until June next. Much has been said of his course in Congress in regard to this war. A careful examination of the magazine "and" World Congress "shows that he voted for all measures of supply that came up, for all actions in any way favorable to the officers, soldiers and their families, who conducted the war through: with the exception that some of these measures passed without yeas and nays, leaving no record as to how particular men voted. The Journal "and" Globe "also show your vote that the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States. This is the language of Mr. Ashmun's amendment, for which Mr. Lincoln and nearly or quite all other Whigs of the House of Representatives voted.
Mr. Lincoln reasons for the opinion expressed by this vote were briefly that the President had sent General Taylor into an inhabited part of the country belonging to Mexico and not the United States, and this had led to the first act had never recognized or Texas or the United States whenever it is executed, there was a vast desert between him and the country in which Texas had actual control, that the country act of sending an armed force among the Mexicans was unnecessary, since Mexico was not at all disturbing or threatening the United States or the people thereof, and that it was unconstitutional, because the power to make war rests with Congress, not the President. He thought the main reason for the act was to divert public attention from the surrender of "Fifty-four, forty, during his tenure in Congress, called for appointment General Taylor to the presidency, as opposed to all others, and also took an active part of his election after his nomination, speaking a few times in Maryland, near Washington, several times in Massachusetts, and canvassing quite fully his own district in Illinois, which was followed by a majority in the district over 1500 for General Taylor.
After returning from the Congress was the practice of law very seriously than ever. In 1852 he was on the Scott electoral ticket, and did something in the manner of sale, but because of the desperation of the cause in Illinois he did less than in previous presidential canvasses.
In 1854 the profession had almost overcome the idea of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been before.
In the fall of that year, he took the stump with the broader goal will not be practical or to secure, if possible, the reelection of Hon. Richard Yates to Congress. His speeches at once attracted a more marked attention than the State Agricultural Fair in Springfield this year, and Douglas was announced to speak there.
In the 1856 survey done by Mr. Lincoln fifty speeches, none of which, as far as he remembers, was put in print. One of them was made Galena, but Mr. Lincoln has no recollection of any part of the form be, nor do I recall if that speech said nothing about a decision of the Supreme Court. You may have spoken on this subject, and some newspapers may have denounced it, saying what is now attributed to him, but he believes it could not be expressed as represented.