Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in a small
log cabin on Nolin Creek, in Hardin County, Kentucky, near Hodgenville.
His parents, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, were both of modest
backgrounds and meager education. In later life, Lincoln would characterize
both of his parents as having emerged, like him, "from the short
and simple annals of the poor."
The Lincoln side of the family has been traced with a
fair degree of confidence to one Samuel Lincoln, a weaver who emigrated
from England to Hingham, Massachusetts in 1637. Over time, the
Lincolns scattered into various portions of the colonies. After
settling for a time in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Abraham's Lincolns moved
on to Rockingham County, Virginia, where his grandfather, also
Abraham, and father Thomas were both born.
In the closing years of the American Revolution, when
Thomas was four, his father moved the family to Kentucky, where
they settled near the outpost of Louisville. The frontier was
a dangerous place in the years between independence and union,
and in 1786 Abraham was killed during a native raid. After the
death of his father, Thomas continued to pioneer through Kentucky
and Tennessee, eventually settling in Hardin County during the
first years of the nineteenth century.
Little is known about Lincoln's mother. Nancy Hanks was
born of an obscure Virginia family. According to Lincoln's close
friend and law partner William Herndon, Lincoln himself believed
that his mother was of illegitimate birth. No reliable likeness
of Lincoln's mother survives, and controversy has swirled around
the matter for well over a century. At any rate, from whatever
stock, Nancy Hanks married Thomas Lincoln in 1806, while still
a teenager. In addition to Abraham, Nancy bore two other children,
Sarah in 1807 and Thomas, who died at birth in 1812.
In 1811 the Lincoln family moved to a 230-acre farm on
nearby Knob Creek. They spent five productive years there, moving
only when a legal challenge arose to their deed of ownership.
Rather than fight the suit out, Thomas Lincoln elected to move
his family northwest to Indiana in December of 1816. Weather conditions
were harsh during the journey, and at times the family had to hack through
thick brush to make their way, literally clearing the frontier.
The Lincoln family would spend the winter of 1817 under
a makeshift shelter. Such rough living was a standard part of
frontier living, and Abraham would spend a good portion of his
childhood wielding an ax in the service of his father. These difficult
years may have led to a feeling of paternal resentment in Abraham.
When Thomas died in 1851, Lincoln neglected to attend the funeral,
and sent nothing more than a note of cool condolence.
Lincoln's hardy youth would later lend credence to his
legend as a folksy, backwoods prophet, an image he did nothing
to discourage. During the presidential campaign of 1860, he was
trumpeted under the nickname of "rail- splitter," earned from his
workaday childhood pastime. Lincoln the candidate went to great
measures to cultivate a rough and ready rural demeanor, such as
when he casually related a true story from youth in which, during
his tenth year, he had been "kicked by a horse, and apparently
killed for a time."
Shortly after the brush with tragedy when Lincoln was
kicked by a horse, misfortune truly struck the family when Nancy
Hanks Lincoln suddenly died of milk sickness. Left to take care
of two young children, Thomas Lincoln took the practical step and
quickly re-married, to a Kentucky widow named Sarah Bush Johnston.
With this, young Abraham acquired three step-siblings and a new mother,
for whom he quickly developed a strong affection.
From the first, Lincoln was a tall, gangly child, notable
for his oversized extremities. For these reasons, some modern
physicians have recently suggested that he may have been afflicted
with Marfan's syndrome, an inherited disease that adversely affects
connective and skeletal tissue and weakens the heart and the body
in general. Most experts have dismissed this theory, pointing to
Lincoln's hale and active constitution throughout youth and his
clean bill of health during adulthood.
Although Lincoln's parents were illiterate, he became
a voracious reader from quite an early age. While the sum total
of his formal schooling fell short of a year, he nevertheless enjoyed
regular exposure to the Bible and assorted classics, including Aesop's Fables,Arabian
Nights,Pilgrim's Progress, and Robinson Crusoe.
The frontier of Lincoln's youth was a highly evangelical
place, with several Protestant denominations competing fiercely
to enhance their ranks. In 1823, when Lincoln was in the first
flush of his teenage years, his parents joined the Baptist church.
Despite this early allegiance, the young Lincoln never put too
much stock in organized religion. As a result, he was sometimes
viewed as a skeptic and even an infidel during his first years
as a professional lawyer and politician. Nevertheless, he adamantly
refused to join a specific church, although in later years, and
especially during the depths of the Civil War, he became increasingly
concerned with the nature of divine providence.
In 1828, at the age of nineteen, Lincoln struck out on
his own for the first time, as a hand on a flatboat bound for New
Orleans. Lincoln was greatly impressed by the majesty and treachery
of the Mississippi River. One evening, after making camp along
shore, his party was attacked by a group of black men, whom they
were able to escape after being slightly roughed up. Such dangers,
even in the face of flood conditions, did not deter Lincoln from
making a second trip to New Orleans three years later, in the service
of a flatboat trader who later offered to set him up as a store
clerk back in New Salem, Illinois.
Lincoln had contributed heavily during his family's 1830
migration from Indiana to Macon County, Illinois, driving a team
of oxen and working long hours in helping to construct a new family
farm along the banks of the Sangamon River. When his father elected
to relocate again less than two years later, Lincoln chose instead
to make good on the trader's offer, and, little more than a self- described
"piece of floating driftwood," he moved to New Salem to set up
a new life for himself.
During his first few months in New Salem, Lincoln lived
and worked in the village store, taking advantage of idle hours
to improve his theretofore meager education. In the spring of
1832, he decided to take advantage of his local popularity by making
a run for the Illinois General Assembly. However, before he could
begin to campaign in earnest, the Black Hawk War broke out.
In pursuing a policy of frontier expansion during the
early decades of the nineteenth century, the federal government
had run into a series of skirmishes with hostile native populations.
Thanks to superior firepower, the frontiersmen usually had their
way, sending the natives scurrying further and further westward.
President Andrew Jackson, one of the fiercest opponents of the
native population, issued an executive order in 1831 removing the
Sac and Fox tribes from their homelands in Illinois and Iowa.
By way of retaliation, tribal leader Black Hawk decided to lead
a group of displaced natives back to their homeland in an attempt
to reclaim it.
Upon the call for a militia by the governor of Illinois,
Lincoln decided to enlist as a volunteer. In short order he was
elected as captain of his volunteer company, and chose to re-enlist
twice, serving a total of ninety days. Although Lincoln himself
saw no actual combat during his term of service, Black Hawk and
his followers were quickly chased back into Wisconsin, where they
would wave the flag of surrender only to be annihilated anyway.
As a reward for his service, at the tender age of twenty-three,
Lincoln was granted a sizeable tract of land in Iowa, culled from
the homeland of the browbeaten Sac and Fox.
