The Last Days of Thomas Lincoln

LAST DAYS OF THOMAS LINCOLN

Mr. Lincoln did not allow his name to be used as a candidate for re-election, as there were other men in the congressional district who deserved the honor of going to Washington as much as he. On his way home from Washington, after the last session of the Thirtieth Congress
 he visited New England, where he made a few speeches, and stopped at Niagara Falls, which impressed him so strongly that he wrote a lecture on the subject.

After returning home he made a flying visit to Washington to enter his patent steamboat, equipped so that it would navigate shallow western rivers. This boat, he told a friend, "would go where the ground is a little damp." The model of Lincoln's steamboat is one of the sights of the Patent Office to this day.

After Mr. Lincoln had settled down to his law business, permanently, as he hoped, his former fellow-clerk, William G. Greene, having business in Coles County, went to "Goosenest Prairie" to call on Abe's father and stepmother, who still lived in a log cabin. Thomas Lincoln received his son's friend very hospitably. During the young man's visit, the father reverted to the old subject, his disapproval of his son's wasting his time in study. He said:

"I s'pose Abe's still a-foolin' hisself with eddication. I tried to stop it, but he's got that fool idee in his head an' it can't be got out. Now I haint got no eddication, but I git along better than if I had."[206]

Not long after this, in 1851, Abraham learned that his father was very ill. As he could not leave Springfield then, he wrote to his stepbrother (for Thomas Lincoln could not read) the following comforting letter to be read to his father:

"I sincerely hope father may recover his health; but at all events, tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that, if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would be more painful than pleasant, but if it is his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyful meeting with the loved ones gone before, and where the rest of us, through the mercy of God, hope ere long to join them."

Thomas Lincoln died that year, at the age of seventy-three.

A KIND BUT MASTERFUL LETTER TO HIS STEPBROTHER

After his father's death Abraham Lincoln had, on several occasions, to protect his stepmother
 against the schemes of her own lazy, good-for-nothing son. Here is one of the letters written, at this time, to his stepbrother, John Johnston:

"Dear Brother: I hear that you were anxious to sell the land where you live, and move to Missouri. What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year, and what you really want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it. Part with the land you have and, my life upon it, you will never own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half you will get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought.

"Now, I feel that it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel it is so even on] your own account, and particularly on mother's account.

"Now do not misunderstand this letter. I do not write it in any unkindness. I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face the truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away your time. Your thousand pretenses deceive nobody but yourself. Go to work is the only cure for your case."

Abraham Lincoln Losing His Mother

Abraham Lincoln Losing his Mother

                                                                        Nancy Hanks Lincoln

In the fall of 1817, when the Lincoln family had moved from the shed into the rough log cabin, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came and occupied the "darned little half-faced camp," as Dennis Hanks called it. Betsy Sparrow was the aunt who had brought up Nancy Hanks, and she was now a foster-mother to Dennis, her nephew. Dennis became the constant companion of the two Lincoln children. He has told most of the stories that are known of this sad time in the Lincoln boy's life.

The two families had lived there for nearly a year when Thomas and Betsy Sparrow were both seized with a terrible disease known to the settlers as the "milk-sick" because it attacked the cattle. The stricken uncle and aunt died, early in October, within a few days of each other. While his wife was ill with the same dread disease, Thomas Lincoln was at work, cutting down trees and ripping boards out of the logs] with a long whipsaw with a handle at each end, which little Abe had to help him use. It was a sorrowful task for the young lad, for Abe must have known that he would soon be helping his father make his mother's coffin. They buried the Sparrows under the trees "without benefit of clergy," for ministers came seldom to that remote region.

Nancy Lincoln did not long survive the devoted aunt and uncle. She had suffered too much from exposure and privation to recover her strength when she was seized by the strange malady. One who was near her during her last illness wrote, long afterward:

"She struggled on, day by day, like the patient Christian woman she was. Abe and his sister Sarah waited on their mother, and did the little jobs and errands required of them. There was no physician nearer than thirty-five miles.

"The mother knew that she was going to die, and called the children to her bedside. She was very weak and the boy and girl leaned over her while she gave them her dying message. Placing her feeble hand on little Abe's head, she told him to be kind and good to his father and sister.

"'Be good to one another,' she said to them] both. While expressing her hope that they might live, as she had taught them to live, in the love of their kindred and the service of God, Nancy Hanks Lincoln passed from the miserable surroundings of her poor life on earth to the brightness of the Beyond, on the seventh day after she was taken sick."

To the motherless boy the thought of his blessed mother being buried without any religious service whatever added a keen pang to the bitterness of his lot. Dennis Hanks once told how eagerly Abe learned to write:

"Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal, or the p'int of a burnt stick, on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country town, and I made ink out of blackberry juice, briar root and a little copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas would eat the paper after a while. I made his first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We hadn't no geese them days—to make good pens of goose quills."

As soon as he was able Abe Lincoln wrote his first letter. It was addressed to Parson Elkin, the Baptist preacher, who had sometimes stayed over night with the family when they lived in Kentucky, to ask that elder to come and preach[ a sermon over his mother's grave. It had been a long struggle to learn to write "good enough for a preacher"—especially for a small boy who is asking such a favor of a man as "high and mighty" as a minister of the Gospel seemed to him.

It was a heartbroken plea, but the lad did not realize it. It was a short, straightforward note, but the good preacher's eyes filled with tears as he read it.

The great undertaking was not finished when the letter was written. The postage was a large matter for a little boy. It cost sixpence (equal to twelve-and-a-half cents today) to send a letter a short distance—up to thirty miles. Some letters required twenty-five cents—equal to fifty in modern money. Sometimes, when the sender could not advance the postage, the receiver had to pay it before the letter could be opened and read. On this account letters were almost as rare and as expensive as telegrams are today. When the person getting a letter could not pay the postage, it was returned to the writer, who had to pay double to get it back.

In those days one person could annoy another and put him to expense by writing him and forcing] him to pay the postage—then when the letter was opened, it was found to be full of abuse, thus making a man pay for insults to himself!

There was a great general who had suffered in this way, so he made a rule that he would receive no letters unless the postage was prepaid. One day there came to his address a long envelope containing what seemed to be an important document. But it was not stamped, and the servant had been instructed not to receive that kind of mail. So it was returned to the sender. When it came back it was discovered that it had been mailed by mistake without a stamp. That letter announced to General Zachary Taylor that he had been nominated by a great convention as candidate for President of the United States!

All this seems very strange now that a letter can be sent around the world for a few cents. Besides, the mails did not go often and were carried on horseback. For a long time one half-sick old man carried the mail on a good-for-nothing horse, once a week, between New York and Philadelphia, though they were the largest cities in the country.

So it was many months before Abe received an
 answer to his letter. Elder Elkin may have been away from home on one of the long circuits covered by pioneer preachers. As the days and weeks went by without the lad's receiving any reply he was filled with misgivings lest he had imposed upon the good man's former friendship.

At last the answer came and poor Abe's anxiety was turned to joy. The kind elder not only said he would come, but he also named the Sunday when it would be, so that the Lincoln family could invite all their friends from far and near to the postponed service—for it often happened in this new country that the funeral could not take place for months after the burial.

It was late in the following Summer, nearly a year after Nancy's death, that the devoted minister came. The word had gone out to all the region round about. It was the religious event of the season. Hundreds of people of all ages came from twenty miles around on horseback—a father, mother and two children on one horse—also in oxcarts, and on foot. They sat in groups in the wagons, and on the green grass, as at the feeding of the multitudes in the time of the Christ. But these people brought their own refreshments as if it were a picnic.

They talked together in low, solemn tones while waiting for the poor little funeral procession to march out from the Lincoln cabin to the grass-covered grave. Pioneer etiquette required the formalities of a funeral. Elder Elkin was followed by the widowed husband, with Abraham and Sarah and poor Cousin Dennis, also bereaved of his foster-parents, and now a member of the Lincoln family.

There were tender hearts behind those hardened faces, and tears glistened on the tanned cheeks of many in that motley assemblage of eager listeners, while the good elder was paying the last tribute of earth to the sweet and patient memory of his departed friend of other days.

The words of the man of God, telling that assembled multitude what a lovely and devoted girl and woman his mother had been, gave sweet and solemn joy to the soul of the little Lincoln boy. It was all for her dear sake, and she was, of all women, worthy of this sacred respect. As he gazed around on the weeping people, he thought of the hopes and fears of the months that had passed since he wrote his first letter to bring this about.

"God bless my angel mother!" burst from his
 lonely lips—"how glad I am I've learned to write!"

Nancy Lincoln's Boy Baby

"NANCY LINCOLN'S BOY BABY"

Replica of the log cabin in Kentucky where Lincoln was born

Evidently Elizabethtown failed to furnish Thomas Lincoln a living wage from carpentering, for he moved with his young wife and his baby girl to a farm on Nolen Creek, fourteen miles away. The chief attraction of the so-called[ farm was a fine spring of water bubbling up in the shade of a small grove. From this spring the place came to be known as "Rock Spring Farm." It was a barren spot and the cabin on it was a rude and primitive sort of home for a carpenter and joiner to occupy. It contained but a single room, with only one window and one door. There was a wide fireplace in the big chimney which was built outside. But that rude hut became the home of "the greatest American."

Abraham Lincoln was born to poverty and privation, but he was never a pauper. His hardships were those of many other pioneers, the wealthiest of whom suffered greater privations than the poorest laboring man has to endure to-day.

After his nomination to the presidency, Mr. Lincoln gave to Mr. Hicks, a portrait painter, this memorandum of his birth:

"I was born February 12, 1809, in then Hardin County, Kentucky, at a point within the now county of Larue, a mile or a mile and a half from where Hodgen's mill now is. My parents being dead, and my memory not serving, I[ know no means of identifying the precise locality. It was on Nolen Creek.

"A. Lincoln.

"June 14, 1860."

The exact spot was identified after his death, and the house was found standing many years later. The logs were removed to Chicago, for the World's Columbian Exposition, in 1893, and the cabin was reconstructed and exhibited there and elsewhere in the United States. The materials were taken back to their original site, and a fine marble structure now encloses the precious relics of the birthplace of "the first American," as Lowell calls Lincoln in his great "Commemoration Ode."

Cousin Dennis Hanks gives the following quaint description of "Nancy's boy baby," as reported by Mrs. Eleanor Atkinson in her little book on "Lincoln's Boyhood."

"Tom an' Nancy lived on a farm about two miles from us, when Abe was born. I ricollect Tom comin' over to our house one cold mornin' in Feb'uary an' sayin' kind o' slow, 'Nancy's got a boy baby.'

"Mother got flustered an' hurried up 'er work
 to go over to look after the little feller, but I didn't have nothin' to wait fur, so I cut an' run the hull two mile to see my new cousin.

"You bet I was tickled to death. Babies wasn't as common as blackberries in the woods o' Kaintucky. Mother come over an' washed him an' put a yaller flannel petticoat on him, an' cooked some dried berries with wild honey fur Nancy, an' slicked things up an' went home. An' that's all the nuss'n either of 'em got.

"I rolled up in a b'ar skin an' slep' by the fireplace that night, so's I could see the little feller when he cried an' Tom had to get up an' tend to him. Nancy let me hold him purty soon. Folks often ask me if Abe was a good lookin' baby. Well, now, he looked just like any other baby, at fust—like red cherry pulp squeezed dry. An' he didn't improve none as he growed older. Abe never was much fur looks. I ricollect how Tom joked about Abe's long legs when he was toddlin' round the cabin. He growed out o' his clothes faster'n Nancy could make 'em.

"But he was mighty good comp'ny, solemn as a papoose, but interested in everything. An' he always did have fits o' cuttin' up. I've seen him when he was a little feller, settin' on a stool,
 starin' at a visitor. All of a sudden he'd bu'st out laughin' fit to kill. If he told us what he was laughin' at, half the time we couldn't see no joke.

"Abe never give Nancy no trouble after he could walk excep' to keep him in clothes. Most o' the time he went bar'foot. Ever wear a wet buckskin glove? Them moccasins wasn't no putection ag'inst the wet. Birch bark with hickory bark soles, strapped on over yarn socks, beat buckskin all holler, fur snow. Abe'n me got purty handy contrivin' things that way. An' Abe was right out in the woods about as soon's he was weaned, fishin' in the creek, settin' traps fur rabbits an' muskrats, goin' on coon-hunts with Tom an' me an' the dogs, follerin' up bees to find bee-trees, an' drappin' corn fur his pappy. Mighty interestin' life fur a boy, but thar was a good many chances he wouldn't live to grow up."

When little Abe was four years old his father and mother moved from Rock Spring Farm to a better place on Knob Creek, a few miles to the northeast of the farm where he was born.

About "Mord" Lincoln the Indian Fighter

"MORD" LINCOLN, INDIAN FIGHTER

"That was the breaking up of our family.[ None of us boys was old enough to take Father's place, an' Mother she was afraid to live there alone. Accordin' to the laws o' Virginia—Kentucky belonged to Virginia then—the oldest son got all the proputty, so 'Mord' he gets it all. He was welcome to it too, for he was the only one of us that could take care of it. 'Mord' he wasn't satisfied with killin' a few Injuns that day to revenge Father's death. He made a business of shootin' 'em on sight—a reg'lar Injun stalker! He couldn't see that he was jist as savage as the worst Injun, to murder 'em without waitin' to see whether Mr. Injun was a friend or a foe.

"Oncet when I told 'im there was good an' bad red men like they wuz good an' bad white men, he said I might jist as well say 'good devil' as 'good Injun!' He says 'the only good Injun's the dead Injun!'

"Well, the settlers must 'a' 'greed with 'Mord,' for they made him sheriff o' the county—he was sech a good shot, too—an' they 'lected him to the Legislatur' after Kentucky come in as a State. He stood high in the county. Folks didn't mind his shootin' an' Injun or two, more or less, when he got the chancet. They[2] all looked on redskins like they was catamounts an' other pesky varmints.

"Your grandmother Lincoln an' Josiah an' me moved over into Washington County, but she had hard scrabblin' to git a livin'. Josiah he stayed with her, an' between him an' 'Mord,' they helped her along, but I had to git out and scratch for a livin'. From the time I was ten I was hired out to work for my 'keep,' an' anything else I could git. I knocked aroun' the country, doin' this, that an' t'other thing till I picked up carpenterin' o' Joseph Hanks, a cousin o' mine, an' there I met his sister Nancy, an' that's how she come to be your mother—an' 'bout how I come to be your father, too!"

Little is known today of Mordecai Lincoln, and there would be less interest in poor Thomas if he had not become the father of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Mordecai Lincoln was a joker and humorist. One who knew him well said of him:

"He was a man of great drollery, and it would almost make you laugh to look at him. I never saw but one other man whose quiet, droll look excited in me the disposition to laugh, and that was 'Artemus Ward.'[

"Mordecai was quite a story-teller, and in this Abe resembled his 'Uncle Mord,' as we called him. He was an honest man, as tender-hearted as a woman, and to the last degree charitable and benevolent.

"Abe Lincoln had a very high opinion of his uncle, and on one occasion remarked, 'I have often said that Uncle Mord had run off with all the talents of the family.'"

In a letter about his family history, just before he was nominated for the presidency, Abraham Lincoln wrote:

"My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I should say. My mother was of a family of the name of Hanks. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians—not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian] names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

"My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally without education."