Abraham Lincoln: From Log Cabin to President

Introduction

Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most revered presidents in American history. He was born to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Thomas Lincoln was not an educated man; in fact, he had acquired only enough literacy to sign his name, according to McPherson. However, he enjoyed modest prosperity as a carpenter and farmer. Abraham Lincoln's mother was also illiterate. From the son of simple farming folk to the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln would accomplish great things during his tragically short life, including bringing a divided nation back together and reuniting the United States. Lincoln was a "fervent idealist" (Striner 2) and the "rarest of all great men (...) who was also an extraordinary natural genius in the Machiavellian orchestration of power" (10).

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood

As Ewers notes, many schoolchildren know that Abraham was born in a log cabin on "Sinking Spring Farm," three miles south of Hodgenville, Kentucky (Stevenson; "Biographies"). He was two years old when his family moved about ten miles away to another farm on Knob Creek. Although this was a large, 230-acre farm, only thirty acres were tillable. Abraham lived there until he was seven, helping his parents with farm chores and learning his ABCs when he attended school for a few weeks with his older sister Sarah (McPherson).

Once again, the Lincolns moved, this time to Indiana, the newly admitted state to the Union. It is reported that the unusually frequent moving by the Lincolns was due to their dislike of slavery, and as McPherson notes, there may be some truth to this theory. The Lincolns were members of a Baptist denomination that had broken away from the parent church due to slavery issues. However, exacerbating the moving situation was Thomas's uncertainty with the security of Kentucky land titles. In Indiana, property owners were offered secure titles that had been surveyed under the Northwest Ordinance. Living in a crude three-sided shelter on Pigeon Creek, young Lincoln received a few more months of schooling while helping his father build a house and a farm. But in the fall of 1818, Abraham's mother, along with his great aunt and uncle, died from "milk sick," likely caused by drinking milk from cows that had grazed on white snakeroot (Stevenson).

A year later, Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, bringing her and her three children from Kentucky to Pigeon Creek. In the meantime, Abraham began to devour as many books as he could obtain, desiring to learn and improve himself. His father looked unfavorably on this activity, believing Abraham's desire to read rather than work was "lazy," according to McPherson. Exacerbating Abraham's disdain for the life of a backwoods farmer, as was law and custom, Abraham had to turn over wages he earned splitting rails for neighbors before he came of age. This may also be where his hatred for chattel slavery originated, as slaves were denied the "fruits of their labor," just as his father expropriated his own wages. The tensions between Abraham and his father continued to grow. And when his father lay dying and requested to say goodbye to his son, Abraham refused to make the eighty-mile trip, saying, "If we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant" (qtd. McPherson).

Lincoln expanded his horizons and experiences with trips down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, carrying flatboat loads of produce. It was the sight of men and women being bought and sold in the slave markets of New Orleans that shocked him and forever changed the course of his personal history. In the summer of 1831, Abraham finally left his family farm and set out on his own, eventually settling in New Salem, a village approximately twenty miles northwest of Springfield, Illinois (McPherson).

A Maturing Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln spent six years in New Salem. In the beginning, he drifted from job to job, working as a store clerk, mill hand, postmaster, surveyor, and as a partner in a general store that eventually failed (Stevenson; "Biographies"). McPherson describes Lincoln as "six feet four inches tall with a lanky, rawboned look, unruly coarse black hair, a gregarious personality, and a penchant for telling humorous stories." But he was also reflective and nearly brooding, sometimes sinking into serious depression.

While in New Salem, Lincoln continued his education in mathematics and literature under the tutelage of the local schoolmaster, Mentor Graham. Lincoln joined a debating society and developed a love for politics. In 1832, he announced his candidacy for the state legislature, and although his campaign failed, he received 92 percent of the vote in his New Salem district. During the next election in 1834, Lincoln campaigned throughout the entire county and won decisively (McPherson).

In 1836, Lincoln, who was awkward with women, began a half-hearted courtship of Mary Owens. The following year, she broke off the relationship, which McPherson notes was probably to the relief of both Lincoln and Owens. Lincoln then met Mary Todd two years later, in 1839, when she came from Kentucky to live with her sister in Springfield (Stevenson).

Lincoln's Love Life

Todd was cultured, educated, and from the socially prominent family of a Lexington banker. In contrast, Lincoln was rough-hewn and socially awkward, the son of an illiterate backwoods farmer. Yet the mismatched pair fell in love and became engaged in 1840. Although the reasons are uncertain, Lincoln broke off the engagement. And in January 1841, Lincoln suffered his greatest bout of depression. However, their courtship was revived, and when Lincoln's closest friend, Joshua Speed, married in 1842, Lincoln appeared to be assured that marriage was not so frightening. He and Mary wed on November 4, 1842 (McPherson; "Biographies").

The Lincolns had four sons. Mary shared Abraham's interest in public affairs and encouraged his political ambitions. In fact, he often sought her advice on matters. However, in many ways they were quite opposite. Abraham dressed carelessly and was disorganized and indifferent to social niceties. Mary dressed expensively, was quick-tempered, and sometimes shrewish. She lived by the strict decorum of Victorian conventions. McPherson puts forth that Abraham got along with nearly everyone. In contrast, Mary was constantly quarreling with workmen, servants, merchants, and even some of their friends. Sometimes Abraham's moodiness would clash with Mary's temper. In addition, Lincoln often left Mary alone for weeks at a time to pursue his legal and political circuits, leaving her to manage the trials of household management and child rearing. Mary's mental stability, over time, became increasingly fragile.

Lincoln was a Whig and a devotee of Henry Clay, whose American System "with its emphasis on government support for education, internal improvements, banking and economic development to promote growth and opportunity, attracted him" (McPherson). While serving in the legislature, Lincoln was further mentored by John T. Stuart, the Whig minority leader in the house. It was Stuart's encouragement to study law and his assistance with the material needed to pass the bar examination that allowed Lincoln to obtain his law license in 1837 and eventually become Stuart's law partner.

Lincoln's Political Career

Lincoln was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840, and became the floor leader of the Whigs ("Biographies"). He also became a member of the "Long Nine," Whig legislators from Sangamon County, as noted by Stevenson. It was the Long Nine that successfully moved the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield in 1837. During this same legislative session, Lincoln and another colleague from his county protested against a resolution that had overwhelmingly passed by the legislature, one that denounced antislavery societies and implied that the state approved slavery. However, Lincoln also criticized the abolitionists, whom he believed tended "rather to increase than abate (slavery) evils" (qtd. McPherson).

Lincoln retired from the state legislature in 1841 and devoted himself to his law career, forming a partnership with Stephen T. Logan. Lincoln was required to ride the circuit of county courts through central Illinois for several months each spring and fall, as the Springfield courts sat for only a few weeks each year. By the time he married, Lincoln was earning $1,200 a year, equal to the governor's salary. In 1844, in addition to buying the only house he ever owned, he dissolved his partnership with Logan and formed a new one with William H. Herndon, then twenty-six years old, whom Lincoln mentored (McPherson).

Lincoln continued to have political ambitions and wanted to run for Congress, especially given the secure Whig district he was in. However, due to the high concentration of Whig hopefuls, he had to wait his turn under an informal one-term rotation system. In 1846, Lincoln's turn came and he won decisively over Democratic candidate Peter Cartwright, a Methodist clergyman who was well liked, according to McPherson.

Controversy dominated Lincoln's congressional term, concerning the Mexican War. Lincoln supported the Whig position as put forth by President James Polk. Lincoln then introduced "spot resolutions" on December 22, 1847, requesting information on the exact spot of soil where American blood had been shed by the Mexicans, implying that this land was actually Mexican soil. He also voted several times in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, which would prohibit slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico, siding with the majority in the Whig House of Representatives (McPherson).

However, Lincoln's opposition to the Mexican War was not popular in Illinois. Democratic newspapers dubbed him "Spotty Lincoln," and suggested that he had committed political suicide with remarks such as, "What an epitaph: 'Died of Spotted Fever'" (qtd. McPherson). This label would haunt him when he ran in 1848 for the Whig presidential nominee against Zachary Taylor. Although Lincoln's successor in the House, his former partner Logan, lost due to backlash against the Whig party's antiwar stance, Taylor did win the presidency. However, most disturbing to Lincoln was the fact that he did not receive the patronage appointment to commissioner of the General Land Office, as he had anticipated.

Lincoln returned home to devote his time to his law practice, disheartened with politics, and became one of the leading attorneys in the state. He represented both large corporations and small firms (Stevenson), and many of his cases involved local matters of debt, slander and libel, foreclosure, divorce, trespass, and more (McPherson). But it would be the Kansas-Nebraska Act that would force Lincoln back into the political limelight.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act revoked the ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory that lay north of 36° 30'. This repeal of a critical part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 made Kansas Territory open to slavery (Stevenson). This polarized the slave and free states more significantly than anything else had, inciting several years of civil war between anti- and pro-slavery forces in Kansas, becoming a prelude to the national Civil War, according to McPherson. This also gave birth to the Republican party, whose primary platform was the exclusion of slavery from territories.

Whereas prior to 1854 Lincoln had said little against slavery in public, the following six years would see him deliver approximately 175 speeches that centered on the exclusion of slavery from territories as a step toward eradicating it everywhere eventually. Lincoln believed that the Founding Fathers had adopted the Declaration of Independence and enacted the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which barred slavery from most existing territories, as an anti-slavery stance. He put forth that this was the reason why the words "slave" or "slavery" do not appear in the Constitution. He further surmised that opening all of the Louisiana Purchase to slavery via the Kansas-Nebraska Act reversed the course of the Founding Fathers, arousing Lincoln "as he had never been before" (qtd. McPherson).

Lincoln again ran for state legislature, this time campaigning for other "anti-Nebraska" Whigs. He and other anti-Nebraska Whigs and Democrats took control of the legislature. In 1855, Lincoln resigned to become the Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate position. He lost and returned to his law practice until he helped found the Illinois Republican party in 1856. In 1858, he challenged Douglas for the Senate, in which the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates were conducted (Stevenson). The plan was for the Republicans to take control of the legislature and then reconstitute the court to ban slavery from the territories, stifling its growth, where it would eventually "wither and die" (Striner 123). Although the popular vote was nearly even, the Democrats held the majority of seats and reelected Douglas (McPherson).