About Lincoln Buying and Keeping A Store

Abraham Lincoln Buying and Keeping a Store

After making what he considered a bad beginning politically, young Lincoln was on the lookout for a "business chance." One came to him in a peculiar way. A man named Radford had opened a store in New Salem. Possessing neither the strength nor the sagacity and tact of Abe Lincoln, he was driven out of business by the Clary's Grove Boys, who broke his store fixtures and drank his liquors. In his fright Radford was willing to sell out at almost any price and take most of his pay in promissory notes. He was quickly accommodated. Through William G. Greene a transfer was made at once] from Reuben Radford to William Berry and Abraham Lincoln. Berry had $250 in cash and made the first payment. In a few hours after a violent visit from those ruffians from Clary's Grove Berry and Lincoln had formed a partnership and were the nominal owners of a country store.

The new firm soon absorbed the stock and business of another firm, James and Rowan Herndon, who had previously acquired the stock and debts of the predecessors in their business, and all these obligations were passed on with the goods of both the Radford and Herndon stores to "Honest Abe."

The senior partner of the firm of Berry & Lincoln was devoted to the whisky which was found in the inventory of the Radford stock, and the junior partner was given over to the study of a set of "Blackstone's Commentaries," text-books which all lawyers have to study, that came into his possession in a peculiar way, as Candidate Lincoln told an artist who was painting his portrait in 1860:

"One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household] plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it. Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it.

"Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it on the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete set of 'Blackstone's Commentaries.' I began to read those famous works. I had plenty of time; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them."

With one partner drinking whisky and the other devouring "Blackstone," it was not surprising that the business "winked out," as Lincoln whimsically expressed it, leaving the conscientious junior partner saddled with the obligations of the former owners of two country stores, and owing an amount so large that Lincoln[] often referred to it as "the national debt." William Berry, the senior partner, who was equally responsible, "drank himself to death," leaving Lincoln alone to pay all the debts.

According to the custom and conscience of the time, the insolvent young merchant was under no obligation whatever to pay liabilities contracted by the other men, but Lincoln could never be induced even to compromise any of the accounts the others had gone off and left him to settle. "Honest Abe" paid the last cent of his "national debt" nearly twenty years later, after much toil, self-denial and hardship.

POSTMASTER LINCOLN AND JACK ARMSTRONG'S FAMILY

Again out of employment, Abe was forced to accept the hospitality of his friends of whom he now had a large number. While in business with Berry he received the appointment as postmaster. The pay of the New Salem post office was not large, but Lincoln, always longing for news and knowledge, had the privilege of reading the newspapers which passed through his hands. He took so much pains in delivering the letters and papers that came into his charge as
 postmaster that he anticipated the "special delivery" and "rural free delivery" features of the postal service of the present day.