I 1 ■'s ■^ ! JAMES H. CATHEY. THE GENESIS OF LINCOLN. BY JAMES H. CATHEY. Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. *'r AM GLAD YOU HAVE UNDERTAKEN THE 'l.INCOI,N MYSTERY', IF SUCH IT CAN BE STYLED. I BE- LIEVE ALL THAT I HAVE HEARD." — The late Col.Jno. D. Cameron. LIBRfRYnf congress! Twe Copies Received fEB 8 1904 I Cop I Copyright Entry COPY S XJferNo. olnl aft*- Entered according to Act of Congr. ess in the year 1S99 JAMAIS H. CATHKY In the Office of the I^ibrarian of Congre. at Washington, D. C RIGHTS RESERVED.) ^^ He was^ in the most significant way^ a \ man who embodied all the best qtialities of ] unspoiled middle-class men^ j Henry Ward Beecher. \ M !■''*' If ^^The Characteristic which struck 7ne most was his superabiiiida^ice of common sensed Chauncey M. Depew. Y ^ o r ^ ^ ^ v> o z: ^ ^ ^ 5i- -iir "^ Fold-out Placeholder -f * * s *> Fold-out Placeholder lis fold-out is being digitized, and will hP in Qor+oH ^^The people in this country — all the old people with whom I talked — were familiar with the girl as Nancy Hanks?'' Capt. E. Everett. 2)e&icatton» TO THE FUTURE BIOGRAPHER WHO MAY SEARCH FOR AI,I, THE FACTS, AND THE COMING GENERA- TIONS WHO MAY WANT THE WHOI,E TRUTH, THIS TRADITION OF ABRAHAM I,INCOI,N'S ORIGIN, IS SINCEREI,Y DEDICATED. CONTENTS. Chap. Page. 1 AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE 25 2 A COMPARATIVE STUDY 81 3 ABE LINCOLN'S HALF-BROTHER 104 4 ABRAHAM ENLOE 122 5 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 141 6 THE ENLOES 162 7 WISDOM AND PROPHECY 178 8 ADDENDA 186 INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS Page. 1. JAMES H. CATHEY FRONTISPIECE, l- 2. SAWINOOKIH 134 3. COI.. WM. H.THOMAS 80 4. THE OI,D ENI,OE FARMHOUSE 34 5. ABRAHAM I,INCOI,N 84 6. WESI^EY ENI,OE 84 7. MRS. JUI,IA ENI,OE BIRD... 68 8. MISS EI.IZA ENI,OE 96 9. MRS. A. J. PATTON 162 10. MRS. FI,OYD 164 11. WM. A. ENI,OE 16S 12. J. FRANK ENI,OE 174 13. ROBT. WAI^KER ENI^OE loo 14. A. I.INCOI.N 92 15. WESI.EY ENI,OE 9» 16. WESIvEY M. ENIvOE 62 17. CAPT. WM. A. ENI,OE 168, 170 18. ABRAHAM I,INCOI.N— BY Bral>Y 222 19. \VESI,EY M. ENI,OE. 223 20. ABRAHAM I^INCGlvN— By Brady- 230 21. WESI^EY ENI,OE 231 22. JOHN E. BURTON 248 FOREWORD. Generous reader, traverse with me the ensu- ing pages and they shall open to you a "sealed book." They shall lead along the neglected path of unwritten history and reveal to you, with care, an interesting fact in the story of America's most remarkable man. They may tear the veil of popular modesty only to discover the naked truth. The truth cannot hurt the living or the dead. It is often a good popular nervine to disturb the commonplace with the heroic, the romantic, the tragic. It is better still to replace popular shadow of doubt with popular sunshine of fidelity. It is said, "there is a skeleton in every closet and that must not be disturbed." There 14 is no avoiding it with individuals or aggrega- tions. There should be no attempt to avoid explor- ing the dimmest recesses in the life of a real hero. The life and acts of a hero are not cir- cumscribed by narrow lines. The atmosphere that belongs to him at once becomes free and self-imparting. Each and every phase of him is of theintensest interest to humanity; at once becomes, and of right should become, a common heritage. Tradition is the musty old closet in which has been stowed for thousands of years the disjoined skeletons of history. These should be hauled forth, articulated, clothed with the .flesh, and animated with the blood of the living •truth. There is one narrative of human events in which there is no evidence of a traditional closet — the Bible. In this ancient bundle of truth "a spade is called a spade." If the " man after God's own heart" took his 15 fellow's life that he might obtain his wife, this book says so in so many blunt w^ords. If the '' father of the faithful" drove his bond-woman 'and their illegitimate son into the wilderness to die, to please his irate wife, such is the rec- ord. But it is not our purpose here to try to recon- cile moral incongruities. It should be suffi- cient for one to reflect that our world is inhab- ited by men ; that it has been so and doubt- less will. Yielding to a moral cowardice— a feeling that recoils at the thought of making public one's own faults— historians have, with a few refreshing exceptions, cast aside one-half the events of the world. The custom to pass unnoticed the vices, which make up the larger moiety of the man, has lead them to an immoderate exaggeration of his virtues. To these, and a false notion of taste, is trace- able the failure to record volumes without i6 number of the most thrilling history. Here is the try sting-place of truant tradition and family lore. Here, too, is a fruitful nursery of individual and national hypocrisy. The recording of the good, only, in the life of a person or a nation, is a tale half told, a song half sung — often a wondrous tale, an epic song. The statue is not complete till the sculptor has watched the last minute characteristic of the original follow the errand of his chisel. The flower does not show forth all its deli- cate tints in rounded splendor till its last ten- der petal is full blown. Cicero tells us that the first and fundamen- tal law of history is, " That it should neither dare to say anything that is false or fear to say anything that is true, nor give any just suspi- cion of favor or disaffection." This is the standard of the true historian. Apropos to this, Edward Everett Hale says : " The history of mankind is made up of the 17 Ijiographies of men." If this be true, Cicero's standard will apply to biography with double force. The scriptural narrative traces the lineage of Christ along a solid chain of forty-two genera- tions. If the sacred chronicler essa3^edto trace, without trepidation, so remote an origin as that of the divine Christ, why should one tremble or hesitate to inquire after the beginning of a great, though finite man ? The day of miracles has passed these eighteen hundred years, and something cannot come of nothing. It is the historical teaching that Abraham Lincoln was virtually " without ancestors, fel- lows, or successors." Whether this is a delu- sion it does not concern us to argue. He came into the world, and the world understood him not. It is, therefore, the sole purpose of this little book to present a tradition tending to prove that this wonderful man was not without an- cestors. His mother was Nancy Hanks. If i8 he was the son of a worthy sire the world is entitled to know who that sire was ; when, where and how he lived ; whence he came and what his characteristics. For ninety years, or thereabout, from the time it is said Abraham Lincoln was begotten or born, as the case was, and the breeze occurred in the Enloe home, there has sub- sisted among the honest people at the center of authority a lively tradition that Abraham, the head of the Enloe family, was Lincoln's father by Nancy Hanks, who occupied the po- sition of servant-girl in the Knloe household. So confident and persistent have the keepers of this old testimony to the origin of Abraham Lincoln been, when plied with interrogatories, that they knew what they were talking about,, that there was no opening for superstition, and the most one who was inclined to be skeptical could do was to wonder and say nothing. One might hug his incredulity by imagin- ing that the people who fathered the strange 19 accounts of Nancy Hanks and Abraham Knloe and a child, and the wonderful story of the striking personal likeness of Abraham Lincoln and Wesley Enloe,are illiterate, fanatical folk who have conjured up a fragmentary fable, how and for what they know not ; but this incredulity is all cleared away, like fog before the sunbeams, when one learns that the custo- dians of the "Lincoln tradition" are numbered by the scores and hundreds of the first people- men and women— of Western North Carolina. Ladies as well as gentlemen, not only of the immediate section, but also of distant States, visiting at Asheville and other places of resort in our mountains, finding a thread of the tra- dition, they pulled until their curiosity, at least, becoming excited, they visited Wesley Enloe, the al'eged half-brother of Abraham Lincoln, in his hospitable mountain home, were fil'ed with amazement, and went away convinced that the tradition was wrought in cords that could not easily be broken. 20 People who were familiar witli Mr. Lincoln's history, or who knew him personally, were struck with the strange physical resemblance on first sight, and then watched a series of impersonations of Lincoln, as they studied the features and noted the varying postures of the person of Wesley Enloe. The remarkable tradition, with its flesh and blood corroboration, was from time to time engaged to be written up by journalists, law- yers and clergymen of culture and standing, but nothing more than a hasty, desultory newspaper article was the result. The people over a very limited area of population were being made conversant with the valuable tra- dition, and its worthy repositors were, one by one, stepping from the earthly stage. It was plainly apparent that in a very few years the old generation would be gone, and a truth of American history, by sheer neglect, would be forever lost. We felt our incapacity to undertake sa 21 responsible a task. We were conscious of the delicacy of the undertaking, but the implicit, unquestioned faith which we had in the truth- fulness of the tradition gave us a courage which shrank not from the most formidable- looking anti-traditional hobgoblin. Thus emboldened we set to work to gather the odds and ends of our folk-history. We resolved at the outset that we would interrogate none but the most trustworthy — people who were in the best position to give a reason for the faith that was in them, together with the story of the relatives of the distinguished subject of our memoir. This we have, in every instance, done. In 1895 the writer conceived the idea of writing a newspaper or magazine article for the simple purpose of making known the tra- dition to the public generally, hoping thereby to attract the attention of the enterprising journalist, and after that the enduring chron- icler; but private concerns interfered, and our purpose was frustrated for the time. Luckily, 22 however, we then obtained the statements of some very aged gentlemen whose testimony will herein appear, and which is of the most important character, who have since died. We have been extremely fortunate in enlist- ing the co-operation of various good and often distinguished citizens in our search for data. Some of these have passed away since we began our first investigation. Those who are "up and able to be about " are the venerable half- brother of our illustrious subject, Mr. Wesley M. Enloe, and his nephew, Capt. Wm. A. Bnloe ; Dr. Isaac N. Knloe, of Illinois, and Mr. Sanl. G. Enloe, of Missouri ; Mr. J. Frank Enloe, of North Carolina, and Mrs. Floyd, of Texas, son and neice of Wesley M. Enloe ; Mr. H. J. Beck, of Ocona Lufta, N. C. ; C. A. Ragland, Esq., of Stockton, Mo. ; Mr. Joseph A. Collins, of Clyde, N. C. ; Capt. E. Everett, and Mr. D. K. Collins, of Bryson City, N. C. ; the vener- able Philip Dills, Hon. William A. Dills, and Mr. Sion T. Early, of Dillsboro, N. C. ; and Captain James W. Terrell, of Webster, N. C. 23 To each of these gentlemen, and to Mrs. Floyd, the writer wishes to express his most sincere thanks. He has been most deeply touched by the generous and always courteous response his appeals have met from each and all of them, and his obligation to them can only be enhanced by the increase of the im- portance of the historical truth as it goes into the world fresh from their honest and dis- interested lips. In voicing the memory of hundreds, these several individuals wall, for the -first time, bring face to face with the world a fact that is worth the world's while. Tradition once said: "Premature pangs seized the mother of Napoleon while she was at church. She hurried home, barely reach- ing her apartment w^hen the heroic babe was delivered, without accoucheur, on a piece of tapestry inw^rought with an effigy of iVchilles." Gradually becoming credulous, history sa}'S now: "This probably occurred." There is not current a tradition of the 24 Corsican that is entitled to more credit than the North Carolina tradition of the Immortal Rail-splitter. We therefore give it to you and the future historian, as you have it, in modest but faithful form. James H. Cathky. Sylva, N. C. I CHAPTER I. AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE. In the year 1444, the story goes, Charles VII. of France, a man of forty, became sud- denly and deeply enamored of a young French- woman of not more than half his years, but more than twice his tact ; and one of the brightest, wittiest, and most beautiful of women. For six long years this nymph of grace and mischief kept King Charles wound tightly in her web of irresistible cliarms. She caused him to neglect his most excel- lent consort, the queen, and her children ; ta place implacable hatred in the heart of Louis, the king's son, toward his father. She beguiled him to provide her w4th regal 26 palaces throughout his reahn ; adorn her with the most costly apparel and bedeck her with the rarest jewels ; to have her attended by long retinues of liveried servants and trained court- iers. She presented the king with bright and beautiful children; he adored Agnes Sorel with the wild intensity of a youthful lover, and the proud court of France, on bended knee, made obeisance to her. At the end of the six years she suddenly died. The affair was first the property of gos- sip, then of tradition. For many years the story of Charles and Agnes was passed from mouth to mouth. Tales of her exquisite beauty and charms were familiar to prince and peasant. The se- cret of her beauty and attractions was said to have been her blond hair and teeth of rarest pearl, adorned at her will by the most bewitch- ing smile. iVs the years continued and the world heark- ened to these seemingly extravagant reports, 1 27 there might have been seen significant tossings of the head, and there might have been heard the mnrmurings of an incredulous public. But in the year 1777, three hundred and twen- ty-seven years after Charles the Seventh had gently laid Agnes in her tomb at Loches, it was decided by some ecclesiastics that her monument was in the way and that it must be removed. The monument was accordingly torn down, the marble slab was raised, and at a distance of a few feet in the ground the workman struck a coffin, the lid of which was taken away, then another of lead, which, when opened, disclosed a third of iron, inside of which they found a jaw filled with rows of shapely teeth, and long, flowing braids of blond hair soft as velvet. Since this it is said that no Frenchman has dared doubt the popular story of the personal beauty of Agnes Sorel. This story of the king's mistress is a demon- stration of the substantial truth of any deep- rooted tradition. 28 Illustrated thus tradition becomes what in fact it always is, a loud panegyric to the col- lective veracity of mankind. From out the shafted grave of human charity and the iron casket of canonization shall come forth the teeth and tresses of convincing testimony. Tradition is the principal means by which plain people preserve a knowledge of events. History is made up of tradition. A very small percentage of the happenings of the world is recorded, the historian being an eye-witness. Even those events that are recorded when they take place are anticipated, being of the most important character, and become the subjects of a score of chroniclers, all embalming the Same substantial facts, but immersed in the peculiar oils and spices of each individual chronicler. Many of the most delicate and yet indispen- sable notes of history that tell of the real character of people, savage and savant, come down the decades by word of mouth. They 29 are passed from ear to ear in silent pride and childish confidence around the cozy firesides of neighborhoods and states. It is the inestimable and inalienable right of memory. Deprive, if it were possible, a people of their traditions, and you will rob memory of the tenderer half of its trophies. You will trans- form joyous youth into sober manhood in a single night, and turn the sunny plain of the aged into a wailing desert in a single day. Every long-established and generally ac- cepted tradition bears upon its face the author- ity of truth. The popular gaze melts away the mist, and popular scrutiny finds out the facts; popular judgment weighs these facts, •and popular honesty discloses them. The birth and many of the events in the life of Christ were for a long while confided to tradition's sacred keeping. Now that they are written in books and chiseled in marble, who doubts the tale of the shepherds and ad- missions of the wise men ? 30 The birth and life of Christ carry with them divine authorization. So does any truth. The following tradition is more than ninety years old. Its center of authority is Swain and neighboring counties of Western North Carolina : Some time in the early 3^ears of the century^ variously given 1803, ^^^5^ 1806, and 1808^ there was living in the family of Abraham Enloe, of Ocona Lufta, N. C, a young woman whose name was Nancy Hanks. This young woman remained in the household, faring as one of the family until, it becoming apparent that she was in a state of increase, and there appearing signs of the approach of domestic infelicity, she was quietly removed, at the in- stance of Abraham Enloe, to Kentucky. This is the most commonly accepted version of the event. Another pretty current construction of the story is that when Abraham Enloe emigrated from Rutherford county, there came with his 31 family a servant-g-irl whose name was Nancy Hanks, and who, after a time, gave birth to a boy child which so much resembled the legit- imate heirs of Abraham Enloe, that their mother warmly objected to the presence of so unpleasant a reminder, and' the embarrassed husband had the young child and its mother spirited to Kentucky. These are the two uni- versally accepted versions of the one thor- oughly accredited fact. The tradition subsists on four salient and perfectly conversant points : First. — That in the early years of the cen- tury a young woman took up her abode at Abraham Enloe's, in the capacity of hired girl, whose name was Nancy Hanks. Second. That this same girl, Nancy Hanks, while living at Abraham Enloe's, be- came enceinte ; or entangled in an embarrass- ment in which her illegitimate child was the unconscious instigator. Third. — That the wife of Abraham Enloe, 32 believing that her husband was the father of Nancy Hanks's child, and being unwilling to countenance what she conceived to be a re- proach upon herself and children, demanded the disconnection of Nancy Hanks from liei household. Fourth. — That Abraham Enloe heeded the demand of his wife and forthwith effected the transportation of Nancy Hanks and her off- spring to the State of Kentucky. " Wherefore she said unto Abraham, cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. And the thing was very grievous in Abra- ham's sight because of his son. And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman ; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice ; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation» because he is thy seed. 33 And Abraham rose up early in the morning and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away ; and she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow-shot ; for she said let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him and lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the lad ; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven and said unto her : What aileth thee, Hagar ? fear not ; for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad and hold him in thine hand ; for I will make him a great nation. And God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water ; and she went and filled the bot- de with water and gave the lad drink. 34 And God was with the lad, and he grew and- dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer. And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran." This is the entire beautiful and pathetic story of Hagar and her son. As one reads it how much of it seems analogous to poor Nancy Hanks and the account of Abraham Ivincoln's childhood. But if men and women living under kindred' circumstances a little more than three-quarters - of a century since are as much entitled to be believed as Moses, the drama of Abraham and Sarah and their bondw^oman Hagar, and her child, in this tradition, is again enacted" with strange fidelity. Bereft of the tender guardianship of either father or mother, and thrown adrift on the cold charity of the world,. Nancy Hanks, in what particular manner is unknown at this distant day, sought shelter under the kindly roof of Abraham Enloe. She was young, doubtless yet in her teens.. The bloom of youth had not faded from her THE OLD HOUSE. The Residence of Wesley Enloe, and the House of Abraham Enloe when Nanc}- Hanks was Transported to Kentucky. 35 'brow. The expression of native intelligence, saddened by scenes of poverty and pain, shone from her eye. In her voice ran a tone of mel- ancholy, betraying a life of sorrow and neglect. It was a red-letter day for her when she was welcomed by the family into the comfortable home of Abraham Enloe. Never had the sun shone brighter or the birds sung sweeter to her than on that day. She drank afresh life's invigorating elixir, and dreamed for the first time of some of its most pleasant realities. Her face became changed ; there was now no mingled look of weariness and woe, only a faint trace of the sad. Her eye was changed ; there was now the sparkle of light and life, with the dimmest expression of gloom. ^ Her voice was changed ; there was now the music of contentment and peace, with the softest ac- ■companiment of grief. In a word, from the day Nancy Hanks en- tered the home of Abraham Enloe hers was the happy fortune for the first time in her life 36 to know what was meant by having comforta- ble clothes, a good bed, nutritious food and warm friends, and ere she was aware rosy health and radiant hope had stolen into her being and taken up their abode. She had now learned the formal round of household chores, and her life becamxC halcyon. In her step was the light, quick spring of youth ^. and she turned off the domestic duties with a. despatch and ease that would have done credit to one of more practiced skill. Months, and it may be years, passed thus,, and the cherry presence and admirable service of Nancy Hanks engrafted themselves into the family life and economy of Abraham Enloe ;. she was by mutual and inadvertent acknowl- edgment one of its members. But the time came when the "even tenor '^ of Abraham Enloe's household was disturbed ;. it w^as a sly and impious mishap, for which the head of the household was held by his wife to- be primarily responsible. It was a sad hour when Nancy Hanks was forced by her mistake to take a final leave of her otherwise happy home in the Carolina mountains. There is no doubt but that indirectly Abra- ham Enloe gave her the "bread and bottle of water " the morning she was sent into the for- est and toward her Kentucky home. Nay, more, there is little doubt that he was better to her and his child than was Abraham of old to Hagar and his, for he did not set them adrift in the wilderness to survive or perish as it pleased providence, but like a man with a great compassionate heart, provided them horses and a safe consort to bring them to their predetermined destination. However remarkable the similarity in phys- ical circumstances, equally wonderful is the moral analogy of these two cases. If the case of Hagar and her tender boy presents a picture of pity and despair, that of Nancy Hanks and her infant child presents a . 38 scene that is the very soul of sorrow and re- gret. The parallel does not cease with their banishment and journeyings, but is sustained in the privations and sufferings in childhood and youth, and the exalted honor and distinc- tion of the mature manhood of Ishmael and Abraham Lincoln. • • Charles Kingsley says : ''It was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life." A learned divine recently said : ''St John wrote his gospels about sixty years after the events took place. Yet he had an old man's vivid recollection of distant occurrences." Tendering them these words of assurance from most eminent authority, we shall here turn over this tradition, for the time being, to its faithful repositors. 39 PHIIvIP DII.I.S. Mr. Dills was born in Rutherford county, N. C, January lo, i8oS. His father emi- -grated to the mountains of Western North Carolina almost contemporaneously with Abraham Enloe. Although Mr. Dills was four years old when Jackson whipped Paken- ham at New Orleans, he is nimble both in h)ody and mind. He describes the removal of the Cherokees west of the Mississippi ; tells of the elections when Clay and Jackson were rivals — of casting his first vote for the latter ; recalls the personal appearance of John C. Calhoun, whom he saw -and with whom he talked ; the duel between Sam Carson and Dr. Vance, and many other incidents of early days he distinctly remembers and recites with genuine gusto. Mr. Dills is a citizen of Jackson county- His post-office is Dillsboro. He said : "Although a generation younger and liv- ing some twenty-five miles from him, I knew 40 Abraham Enloe personally and intimately^ I lived on the road which he frequently trav- eled in his trips south, and he made my house a stopping-place. He was a large man, tall, with dark complexion, and coarse, black hain He was a splendid looking man, and a man of fine sense. His judgment was taken as a guide, and he was respected and looked up to in his time. *' I do not know when I first heard of his relation with Nancy Hanks, but it was many years before the civil war, and while I was a very young man. The circumstance w^as related in my hearing by the generation older than myself, and I heard it talked over time and again later. I have no doubt that Abra- ham Enloe was the father of Abraham Lin- coln." WALKER BATTLE. Mr. Battle was born February 12, 1809, ia Haywood county. His father was one of the three men who came to Ocona Lufta with 41 Abraham Enloe. He was a highly respected' citizen of Swain county. The following- statement was received from him in 1895. He has since died. His son, Milton Battle, a reputable citizen, is familiar with his father's statement. His post-office is Bryson City, N. C. Walker Battle said : " My father was one of the first settlers of this country. He came here with Abraham Enloe. I have lived here my entire life, and I knew Abraham Enloe and his family almost as well as I knew my own. " The incident occurred, of course, before my day, but I distinctly remember hearing my own family tell of the trouble between Abraham Enloe and Nancy Hanks when I was a boy. I recall, as if it were but yester- day, hearing them speak of Nancy's removal to Kentucky and that she married there a fellow by the name of Lincoln ; that Abraham Enloe had some kind of correspondence with the woman after he sent her to Kentucky— 42 -sent her something — and that he had to be very cautious to keep his wife from finding it out. "There is no doubt as to Nancy Hanks having once lived in the family of Abe Enloe, and there is no doubt that she was the mother of a child by him. " No, I never saw Nanc}^ Hanks's name in print in my life, and never saw a sketch of Abraham lyincoln, or heard of him, unril he became a candidate for the presidency in i860." WIIvLIAM H. CONLKY. Mr. Conley v/as born about the year 1812, in Haywood county. He lived the greater part of his life within fifteen miles of Abra- ham Bnloe's. He was a man of intelligence and perfect veracity. The following state- ment, the original of which is in the writer's possession, was obtained from him in 1895. He has since died. . 43 Mr. Conley said : "My father, James Conley, was the first white- man to settle on the creek in this (Swain) county, which bears his name. Abraham En- loe was one of the first to settle on Ocona Ivufta. Bnloe and my father were warm friends. I knew Abe Enloe myself well. He was an impressive looking man. On first sight you were compelled to think that there was something extraordinary in him, and when you became acquainted with him your first iir^ pression was confirmed. He was far above the average man in mind. "As to the tradition : I remember when I was a lad, on one occasion some of the women of the settlement were at my father's house, and in conversation with my mother they had a great deal to say about some trouble that had, once occurred between Abe Bnloe and a girl' they called Nancy Hanks, who had at some- time staid at Enloe's. I heard nothing more,, as I now remember, about the matter, until ther 44 •year before the war, the news came that Abra- ham Ivincoln had been nominated for the pres- idency, when it was the common understand- ing among the older people that Lincoln was the son of Abe Bnloe by Nancy Hanks. "Not one of them had ever seen, up to that time, a written account of Lincoln. There is no doubt that Nancy Hanks lived at Abraham Enloe's. She became pregnant while there by Abraham Enloe, and to quell a family dis- turbance Knloe had her moved to Kentucky, just as my father and mother, and others, have time and again related in my hearing. "I have no doubt that Abe Bnloe was the father of Abraham Lincoln." CAPTAIN HP. EVERETT. Captain Everett was born April 4, 1830, in Davy Crockett's native county, Tennessee. He came to what was then Jackson, now Swain county, in the late fifties, and has since lived in twelve miles of the Abe Enloe home- rstead. He was captain of Company E, Third 45 "Tennessee. He served through the entire war, showing conspicuous courage at First Manassas. He helped to organize the county of Swain, in 1 87 1. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1875, that amended the Consti- tution of the State. He has been magistrate, mayor of the town of Bryson City, and sheriff of the county. He is well known throughout the State as one of her best and brainiest, citizens. He said : "In time of the war, in conversation with various old and reliable citizens of this section, I learned that Abe Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, once lived in the family of Abe Enloe and was sent from there to Kentucky, to be delivered of a child. The cause of her removal to Kentucky was a threatened row between Abe Enloe and old Mrs. Enloe, his wife. The people in this county— all the old people with whom I talked— were familiar with the girl as Nancy Hanks. This subject was not only the <:ommon country rumor, but I saw it similarly 40 rehearsed in the local newspapers of the time,^ I have no doubt of its truth.'* CAPTAIN JAMES W. TBRRKIyl/. Captain Terrell was born in Rutherford county, N. C, the last day of the year 1829. At the age of sixteen he came to Haywood,, where he lived with his grandfather, Wm. D.. Kirkpatrick, until 1852, when he joined him- self in business with Col. Wm. H. Thomas, a man of great shrewdness and enterprise. In 1854 he was made disbursing agent to the North Carolina Cherokees. In 1862 he en~ listed in the Confederate service as lieutenant in a company of Cherokee Indians. Later he w^as promoted. Since the war he has mer- chandised and been a railroad contractor. He has represented his county in the legislature and filled other offices of trust and honor. He is recognized throughout Western North Car- olina as a most excellent and useful citizen. He said: 47 "Having personally had some hints from the Enloes, of Jackson and, Swain, with whom I am intimately acquainted, my attention was seriously drawn to the subject by an article which appeared in Bledsoe's Revieiv^ in which the wTiter gives an account of a difficulty be- tween Mr. Lincoln's reputed father and a man named Enloe. "I then began to inquire into the matter and had no difficulty in arriving at the follow- ing indisputable facts, for which I am indebted to the following old people : The late Dr. John Mingus, son-in-law to Abraham Enloe; his W'idow IMrs. Polly Mingus, daughter of Abra- ham Enloe (lately deceased), and their son Abram Mingus, who still lives ; also to the late William Farley and the late Hon. William H. Thomas, besides many other very old people, all of whom, I believe, are now dead. " 1st. Some time about the beginning of the present century, a young orphan girl was em- ployed in the family of Abram Enloe, then 48 of Rutherford county, N. G. Herjjosition in the family was nearly that of member, she being an orphan with no relatives that she knew. Her name was undoubtedly Nancy Hanks. Abram Enloe moved about the year 1805 from Rutherford, stopping first for a short while on Soco creek, but eventually set- tled on the Ocona Lufta, where his son, Wesley M. Enloe, now resides, then Buncombe, after- ward Haywood, later Jackson and now Swain county. "2d. Some time after settling on the Ocona Lufta Miss Hanks became enceinte^ and a family breeze resulted and Is'ancy Hanks was sent to Kentucky. " 3d. She was accompanied to Kentucky by or through the instrumentality of Hon. Felix Walker, then a member of Congress from the * Buncombe district.' "There is no doubt of the truth of these statements. They were all of them well known to a generation just passed away, and 49 •with many of whom I was well and intimately acquainted. The following I give as it came to me : "A probable reason for sending the girl Nancy Hanks to Kentucky was that at that time some of the Enloe kindred were living there. I was informed that a report reached here that she was married soon after reaching Kentucky. ''Mrs. Abram Enloe's maiden name was Egerton, and she was a native of Rutherford -county. Some years ago, meeting with Dr. Egerton, of Hendersonville, and finding that he was a relative of Mrs. Enloe, our conversa- tion drifted toward the Enloe family, and he imparted to me the following: ''Some time in the early fifties two young men of Rutherford county moved to Illinois and settled in or near Springfield. One of them, whose name was Davis, became inti- mately acquainted with Mr. Lincoln. In the fall of i860, just before the presidential elec- 50 tion, Mr. Davis and his friend paid a visit back- to Rutherford and spent a night with Dr. Egerton. Of course the presidential candi- dates would be discussed. Mr. Davis told Dr. Egerton that in a private and confidential talk which he had with Mr. Lincoln the latter told him that he was of Southern extraction, that his right name was, or ought to have been, Enloe, but that he had always gone by the name of his stepfather. "Mr. Enloe's Christian name was Abram, and if Mr. Lincoln was his son he was not un- likely named for him. "About the time of }he famous contest be- tween Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglass, Hon. Wm. H. Seward franked to me a speech of Mr. Lincoln's, made in that campaign, en- titled: 'Speech of Hon. y^^r<^;;^ Lincoln.' He himself invariably signed his name 'A. Lin- coln.' "To my mind, taking into consideration the unquestioned fact that Nancy Hanks was an 5^ inmate of Abram Enloe's family, that while tlicre she became pregnant, that she went to Kentucky and there married an obscure man named Lincoln, the story is highly probable indeed, and when fortified with the wonderful likeness between Wesley M. Enloe, legitimate son of Abram Enloe, and Mr. Lincoln, I can- not resist the conviction that they are sons of the same sire. A photo of either might be passed on the family of the other as their gen- uine head." HON. \VM. A. DILLS. Mr. Dills is a native of Jackson county, N. C, and resides in the thriving little town which was named in his honor— Dillsboro. He is an intelligent, progressive citizen. His people have honored him with place and power. He has represented his county in the lower house of the legislature. He said : " My information with regard to the subject, . so far as this country is concerned, is tradi- 52 tional, as the events named occurred long- before I was born. "Several years ago, while I was teachings school in the State of Missouri, I read a sketch of the life of Abraham Lincoln, which ran as follows: 'Abraham Lincoln was born in the State of Kentucky, of a woman whose name was Nancy Savage or Nancy Hanks. His father is supposed to have been a man by the name of Enloe. When the boy was eight years old his mother married an old man by the name of Lincoln, whose profession was rail-splitting. Soon after the marriage he took a large contract of splitting rails in the State of Illinois, where he took the boy and his mother, and the boy assumed the name of Lincoln.' The above is a verbatim quotation of the sketch that far. ''On my return from Missouri I took occa- sion to investigate the old tradition to my own satisfaction. I found that Nancy Hanks once lived with Abraham Enloe, in the county of 53 Buncombe (now Swain), and while there be- came involved with Enloe ; a child was immi- nent, if it had not been born, and Nancy Hanks was conveyed to Kentucky. "The public may read in Wesley M. Enloe, son of . Abraham Enloe, a walking epistle of Abraham Lincoln. If there is any reliance to be placed in tradition of the strongest class they are half-brothers. I have not the shadow of a doubt the tradition is true. " For further information, I refer you to Col. Allen T. Davidson, of Asheville.'' JOSEPH A. COLLINS. Mr. Collins is fifty-six years of age and resides in the town of Clyde, in Haywood county. He served three years of the war between the States as a private, after which he was pro- moted to the second lieutenancy of his com- pany, in which capacity he continued until the surrender. He has been in the mercantile business for twenty-five years, ten years of which he was a travelino^ salesman. He is 54 now proprietor of a hardware store in liis home town. He is well known over the entire wes- tern part of the State as a gentleman of the most unquestionable integrity. He said : "The first I knew of any tradition being connected with Abraham Lincoln's origin on his father's side was in 1867. At that time I was in Texas, and while there I made the acquaintance of Judge Gilmore, an old gentle- man who lived three miles from Fort Worth. "He told me he knew Nancy Hanks before she was married, and that she then had a child she called Abraham. ' While the child was yet small,' said Judge Gilmore, 'she married a man by the name of Lincoln, a whisky distiller. * Lincoln,' he said, 'was a very poor man, and they lived in a small log house.' " 'After Nancy Hanks was married to the man Lincoln,' said Gilmore, 'the boy was known by the name of Abraham Lincoln. He said that Abraham's mother, when the boy was about eight years old, died.* 55 "Judge Gilinore said he himself was five or six years older than Abraham Lincoln ; that he knew him well ; attended the same school with him. He said Lincoln was a bright boy and learned very rapidly ; w^as the best boy to work he had ever known. "He said he knew Lincoln until he was al- most grown, when he, Gilmore, moved to Texas. During his residence in Texas he was elected judge of the county court. He was ■an intelligent, responsible man. "Years ago I was traveling for a house in Knoxville. On Turkey creek, in Buncombe county, N. C, I met an old gentleman whose name was Phillis Wells. He told me that he knew Abraham Lincoln w^as the son of i\bra- liam Enloe, who lived on Ocona Lufta. " Wells said he was then ninety years of age. When he was a young man he traveled over the country and sold tinware and bought furs, feathers, and ginseng for William Johnston, of Waynesville. He said he often stopped with 56 Abraham Euloe. On one occasion he called to stay over night, as was his custom, when Abraham Enloe came out and went with him to the barn to put up his horse, and while there Enloe said : "'My wife is mad; about to tear up the place ; she has not spoken to me in two weeks, and I wanted to tell you about it before you went in the house.' Then, remarked Wells: 'I said what is the matter?' and Abraham Enloe replied: 'The trouble is about Nancy Hanks, a hired girl we have living with us.' Wells said he staid all night, and that Mrs. Enloe did not speak to her husband while he was there. He said he saw Nancy Hanks there ; that she was a good-looking girl, and seemed to be smart for business. " Wells said before he gotbacfc there on his next trip that Abraham Enloe had sent Nancy Hanks to Jonathan's creek and hired a family there to take care of her ; that later a child was born to Nancy Hanks, and she named him Abraham. 57 "Meantime the trouble in Abraham Enloe's family had not abated. As soon as Nancy Hanks was able to travel, Abraham Enloe hired a man to take her and her child out of the country, in order to restore quiet and peace at home. He said he sent her to some of his relatives near the State line between Tennes- see and Kentucky. He said Nancy and the child were cared for by Enloe's relatives until she married a fellow by the name of Lincoln. " I asked the old gentleman if he really believed Abraham Lincoln was the son of Abraham Enloe, and he replied : ' I know it, and if I did not know it I would not tell it.' " I made special inquiry about the character of Wells, and every one said that he was an honest and truthful man and a good citizen." H. J. BECK. Mr. Beck was born and reared and has all his life lived on Ocona Lufta. He was one of Abraham Enloe's neighbors, as was his father before him. He is now an octoo^enarian. He IS well-to-do, intelligent and of upright char- acter. He said : " I have heard my father and mother often speak of the episode of Abraham Enloe and Nancy Hanks. They said Abraham Enloe moved from Rutherford county here, bringing with his family a hired girl named Nancy Hanks. Some time after they settled here Nancy Hanks w^as found to be with child, and Enloe procured Hon. Felix Walker to take her away. Walker was gone two o^ three weeks. If they told where he took her I do not now think of the place. "As to Abraham Enloe, he was a very large man, w^eighing between two and three hundred. He was justice of the peace. The first I re- member of him, I was before him in trials. In these cases, of difference between neighbors, he was always for peace and compromise. If an amicable adjustment could not be effected he was firm and unyielding. He was an ex- cellent business man." 59 D. K. COLLINS. Mr Collins was born October 8, 1844- He ..as a Lieutenant of Sharpshooters, Ccnpany F 69th N. C. Regiment He is the most ex- tensive dry-goods merchant in the State west ofAsheviUe. He is an excellent crt.zen and cultured gentleman. He said : .The tradition is well-founded. Ihavebeen imposition to note its bearings, and tlrere IS no dol that Nancy Hanks lived at Abraham E„loe's, and that the event took place sub- Sntially as related by the men and women who were familiar with it.'^ CAPT. WM. A. ENLOB. Captain Enloe was born in Haywood (now Jackson) county, and is sixty-six years of age. He is a successful merchant and busmess man. He is a gentleman of superior sense, modesty r^nness and integrity. He was Captarn o company F,a9thN.C. Regiment, commanded by Robt. B. Vance, and served through the Jar He has represented his county in the 6o General Assembly. He is a grandson of Abraham Enloe. He said : *' There is a tradition come down throngh the family that Nancy Hanks, the mother of President Ivincoln, once lived at my grand- father's, and while there became the mother of a child said to be my grandfather Abraham Enloe's. One Mr. Thompson married my aunt Nancy, daughter of Abraham Enloe, contrary to the will of my grandfather ; to conceal the matter from my grandfather's knowledge, Thompson stole her away and went to Kentucky ; on the trip they were married. Hearing of their marriage, my grandfather reflected and de- cided to invite them back home. On their return they were informed of the tumult in my grandfather's household because of Nancy Hanks, w^ho had given birth to a child ; and when my uncle and aunt, Thompson and wife, returned to their Kentucky home, they took ^ith them Nancy Hanks and her child. This 6i is the family story as near as 1 can reproduce it from memory. "In 1 86 1 1 came home from Raleigh to recruit my company. On my return, while waiting for the stage in Asheville, I took dinner at what was then the Carolina House. The table was filled largely with officers going to and from their various commands. The topic of con- versation seemed to be Abraham Lincoln. One of the gentlemen remarked that Lincoln w^as noFthe correct name of the President — that his name was Eiloe and that his father lived in Western North Carolina. I main- tained the part of an interested listener, and 110 one suspected that my name was Enloe. "After this, during the war, and while sta- tioned in East Tennessee, I was handed a paper with nearly a column of what purported to be .a sketch of Abraham Lincoln's early life in Kentucky — alleging that his father's name was Enloe, and that he (Lincoln) was born in Western North Carolina." 62 WESLEY M. ENLOE. Mr. Enloe was born 1811, in Haywood county, N. C, and is the ninth and only sur- viving son of Abraham Enloe. He resides on the same farm and in the same house in which his father lived when Nancy Hanks was ban- ished from the household. He is a quiet^ suave, intelligent gentleman of the old school, and a prosperous farmer. He said : " I was born after the incident between father and Nancy Hanks. I have, however, a vivid recollection of hearing the name Nancy Hanks frequently mentioned in the family while I was a boy. No, I never heard my father mention it ; he was always silent on the subject so far as I know. "Nancy Hanks lived in my father's family. I have no doubt the cause of my father's send- ing her to Kentucky is the one generally alleged. The occurrence as understood by my generation and given to them by that of my father, I have no doubt is essentially true. WESLEY M. ENLOE. 'tr.raditional Half-brother of Abraham Lincoln at the ] Acre of 88. 63 " My father moved to this place (Ocona Lufta) somewhere from 1803 to 1808." A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE. It has been our steady resolve to admit noth- ing in these memoirs over a fictitious or anony- mous signature. But as all the newspaper articles on the subject available are thus signed, we determined to depart from our rule and give the full text of a correspondence in the Charlotte Observer oi September 17th, 1893. The Observer is one of the foremost public prints of the south. It is edited by Colonel Joseph P. Caldwell, a distinguished member of an old, distinguished family, and one of the most brilliant journalists in the country. And if we have been rightly informed, the writer, who signs himself " Student of His- tory," is a worthy member of another and il- lustrious North Carolina family. To THE Editor of The Observer : — ]\Iy attention has been called to the communication in last Sunday's edition on Abraham Lincoln's 64 ancestry. The communication and your inter- esting editorial called to mind a true story in the life of one of Lincoln's contemporaries, Mr. Judah P. Benjamin. It is not known to many of this generation that Mr. Benjamin, when a boy, lived in Fayetteville, N. C, and was a student in the academy, in that city. His brother Solomon and his sister Judith, when quite small, lived in the same tow^n. I think it is true, too, that a part of his boyhood -WSLS spent in Wilmington, N. C. His family were English Hebrews, and he was born in the West Indies. Hon. Warren Winslow, when in Congress, tried to remind Mr. Benja- min of his early life in North Carolina. I heard him say he failed to make Mr. Benja- min's ' memory recollect.' His early life in the United States began in North Carolina and official life, as a member of Mr. Davis's cabinet, ended in Greensboro, N. C, or Char- lotte, in the same State. He separated from Mr. Davis the morning after he left Washing- 65 ■ton, Ga. He was Lincoln's junior by two years. Your correspondent connects Lincoln's life with North Carolina. A few years since, probably in 1889, the writer of this communication w^as informed by Dr. A. W. Miller that he heard in Western North Carolina that there was a tradition in Swain county that x\braham Lincoln was born in that county. That his father's name w^as Abram Enloe, and the name of his mother was Nancy Hanks. That the house in which he was born w^as at that time occupied by Wesley Enloe, ,a son of Abram Enloe, and, --ergo, the half-brother of the great president. In 1890, being in Webster, Jackson county, I met a gentleman who was county surveyor of Jackson, who gave me the story related by Dr. Miller, and added facts in the tradition. The story as related to the doctor was, that Nancy Hanks and Abram were carried to Kentucky by a mule-drover who was in the ihabit of stopping at Abram Enloe's, at the 66 foot of the Smoky mountains, about 1804.^ The surveyor's information was that Felix Walker, the congressional representative — the author of the famous expression 'speaking for Buncombe' — in order to do his constituent: " Abram " a good turn, carried Hagar and' Ishmael to Hardin county, Kentucky. Ile- stated also that two citizens, Davis by name,, lodged one night at his friend's house and stated that they lived in Illinois, and had emi- grated to that State from Rutherford county, . N. C. These gentlemen stated that Abraham Lincoln was acquainted with them, and on learning they were from Rutherford county,, told them his mother had frequently told him she had lived in that county. These gentle- men informed their host (Dr. Egerton of Hendersonville, I think) that Abram Lincoln was one of the big men of the great west, from which they had hailed. This incident hap- pened about 1858. The following week the writer was im Bryson City. 67 Dr. Miller was under the impression that "Wesley Enloe was a facsimile of Abraham Lincoln, or certain members of the Enloe -family were very similar in features to him. The Jackson surveyor had excited my ^ curiosity, and, having a day oif, I lost no time, and was soon on my route up the "Tuckaseegee, bound for the Abram Enloe ^homestead, just fourteen miles from Bryson City. The road was rocky, and my driver was of the silent kind, so I gave my attention to the shaping of my interview on what loomed up to me as a very difficult subject to handle. A silence of iiVe miles was suddenly interrupted by the driver's inquiry as to my business with Mr. Wesley Enloe. I replied promptly, " I am going up principally to look at him." This answer left me to my own reflections and the scenery of the Ocona Lufta, .a branch of the Tuckaseegee, which is beauti- ful beyond description. The native Indian .sunned himself along the roadside, or paddled 68 his smooth canoe under the overhanging Rhododendron. Suddenly the driver, over- burdened with curiosity, at the ninth mile- stone, interrupted me with the question,. "Would I mind telling what I wanted to look at Wesley Enloe for ? " " Not at all ; I have heard he resembles Abram Lincoln, and that he is his half-brother." The driver then be- came satisfied and talkative. He stated he had heard the story frequently, and was a relative of the Enloe family himself.. Passing Yellow Hill, the Indian school sup- ported by the government, a down-grade of three or four miles brought us to a beautiful, rich valley farm, the present home of Wesley, and the old Abraham Enloe homestead. The house was not unlike m.any of the old houses in North Carolina — one story, the roof sloping dow^n over the piazza, with the company-room opening on the porch. Mr. Enloe and his wife w^ere seated in front, a picture of undis- turbed contentment and rural happiness,. MRS. JULIA ENLOE BIRD. Tangliter of Wesley Enloe and therefore Niece of Abraham Lincol 69 The driver carried his team to the barn, and Mrii Enloe retired to look after the dinner. Mr. Enloe was about six feet, two or three inches tall, and, to my great disappointment, bald-headed ; his right shoulder a little lower than his left ; when standing, just slightly stooped forward. Our conversation took a varied turn — the force bill, the Alliance, crops, walnut rails, etc. I inquired finally if he had :: picture of himself before he lost his hair. His daughter Julia, about nineteen years old, was summoned and brought a basketful of photographs. My attention was taken at once by the striking resemblance between Julia and Abraham Lincoln. The picture with a full head of hair failed to satisfy me of a striking face resemblance between Wes- ley Enloe and Abraham Lincoln. The pho- tograph was taken the year Lincoln was killed, in Waynesville, to which place Mr. Enloe had carried a drove of beef-cattle the summer of 1865. 70 Mr. Enloe stated that he had never heard his father's name mentioned in his family in connection with Abraham Lincoln. He said : ^' I was the youngest of a family of sixteen. Such might have been the fact, but of course the older ones would not be apt to talk to me on a subject like that ,to which you allude. About 1 87 1, say ten years ago, I learned and heard the story read from an Asheville paper for the first time." The subject was dropped until four, when I started for home. I remarked, after thanking him for his hospitality, that I was perhaps the only man who had ever called just to look at him. The old man was without his coat, with wool hat, narrow brim. He replied pleasantly : *'Now that you have seen me, what do you think?'* My reply was that I must confess that I was disappointed, but that nowseeing him with his hat on, with his hands crossed behind him (a favorite posture with Mr. lyincoln), taking in the whole six feet, three or four inches, there was 71 a resemblance which I had no doubt was greater twenty-five years past. The resem- blance in the case of Miss Julia is striking. The old gentleman then related the follow- ing incident : ^' Two months past, in Dillsboro, in my daughter's parlor (she married in that town) is a map picture of President Lincoln. She said to me, ' Look at that picture. Did you ever see a better picture of my brother Frank?' Frank is my son and I have always heard he was much like my brother Scroup, who was said to be very like his father Abra- ham Bnloe. I favor my mother's people. In size I am like the Enloes." I failed to find Frank Enloe at home. At Dillsboro, having a draft to cash, I was informed by the hotel-keeper that William Knloe would cash it. On going into the store) filled with customers, I recognized William Bnloe by his resemblance to Mr. Lincoln. On my return east, arriving at Asheville at 3 P.M., I had dismissed the subject from my 72 mind, but resolved to see Colonel Davidson^, the father of our late attorney-general. I found him at home, willing to talk. And nowj Mr. Editor, here is Colonel Davidson's st'^ry as your correspondent remembers it : "Abram Knloe lived in Rutherford county. He had in his family a girl named Nancy Hanks, about ten or twelve years of age. He moved from Rutherford to Buncombe and set- tled on a branch of the Ocona, in what was afterwards Haywood, and what is now Swain county. At the end of eight years he moved to the house at the foot of the Smoky moun- tain, the place above described as the present liome of Wesley Enloe. "Soon after Abram moved his own daughter, Nancy Knloe, against his wish, ran away and married a Kentucky gentleman named Thomp- son, from Hardin county in that State. "In the meantime during the absence of Mrs- Nancy Bnloe Thompson in Kentucky, at the home of Abram Enloe a son was born to Nancy 73 Hanks, then about twenty or twenty-one years of age. The relations between Mrs. Enloe and her husband became, as a matter of course,, unpleasant. "There is a lady now living," says Colonel Davidson, "who, as agirl, was visiting Abram Enloe. This lady says that Nancy Enloe Thompson, having become reconciled with her parents, had returned from Kentucky to North Carolina. They were to start to Kentucky again in a few days, and she remembered hear- ing a neighbor say, 'I am glad Nancy Hanks and her boy are going to Kentucky with Mrs. Thompson. INIrs. Enloe will be happy again.' " I married into the Enloe family myself. I settled Abram Enloe's estate, and have fre- quently heard this tradition during my life, and have no doubt of its truth." He added the following story, which is sig- nificant : " I am a lawyer. I was seated in my office, since the war and soon after its close. A gen— 74 tleman called, introduced himself as Thompson and stated he learned that I was the man who settled Abram Bnloe's estate ; that he was a a son of Nancy Bnloe Thompson. He stated, among other things, that he was a Democrat, and had been an Indian agent during the L,in- • coin administration. "I asked," said Col. Davidson, "how Lin- coln, who was a Republican, appointed him, a Democrat, an Indian agent? " Thompson replied that Lincoln was under some great obligation to his ( Thompson's ) mother, and expressed a desire to aid her, if possible, in some substantial way. She finally consented that he might do something for her son, and this is the way I got my appointment. I have written this at your request, Mr. Edi- tor, hoping that you will open your columns to Col. Davidson and others, so that we may follow the clues these people may furnish, and thus see if there is any truth in this interest- ing North Carolina tradition. Student of History. 75 On first blii3li there might seem to be a dis-- crepancy between the statement of Wesley Enloe to the writer of these testimonies and. the above correspondent, but there is none. He stated to the former that he had fre- quently heard the name Nancy Hanks spoken by other and older members of the family in his boyhood, but never heard his father men- tion the name or episode. He stated to the latter that he had never heard Lincoln's name associated with the name of his father or the family; that he was the youngest of his father's sixteen children, and they had, doubt- less, kept the matter from him because (such is the inference ) of his juniority. I know that Wesley Enloe has taken no serious thought of the matter ; that he is an extremely retired and modest citizen, never, doubtless, having had a biography of Lincoln in his house, and the in- cidents herein related came to him by degrees, dawned on him gradually like so many reve- lations. It must be remembered that he was- 76 Ijorn two years, according to history, and per- haps four or five years according to the North Carolina tradition by some of the witnesses, after the birth of Mr. Lincoln. The fact was recalled by the older and knowing ones, by the association of the name Nancy Hanks with that of the great emancipator, and the statements of those wdio had been so fortunate as to obtain admissions from Mr. Lincoln him- :self , his mother and their Kentucky neighbors. Again it must be borne in mind that the En- loes were citizens of the same neighborhood -and doubtless friends of ]\Ir. Lincoln's from the very beginning of his public career. The episode was a matter of extraordinary local notoriety in the most secret way, for the reason, as explained b}' many of the old people Avho were familiar with it, that iVbraham En- loe was a very prominent citizen and greatly respected and admired by his neighbors and fellow-citizens, and the head of one of the best families of North Carolina, as w^ell as through 11 genuine sympathy for Nancy Hanks, who, ac- cording to the tradition, was held in unaffected esteem by the settlement. It is interesting to note that the Observer correspondent is one of the very few intelli- gent students of Wesley Enloe who, even at his advanced age, when his features are pinched and sharpened by years and toil, fails to see in him a striking facial as well as bodily resem- blance to Abraham Lincoln. C. A. RAGIvAND, ESQ. Mr. Ragland is a citizen of Missouri aiid a leading attorney of the town of Stockton. He wrote : "In reply to your letter to my wife have to say : iVbout twelve years ago I called on Col. T. G. C. Davis at his office in St. Louis, Mo. At that time I lived in Illinois. Col. Davis was a relative of mine, his mother having been a Miss Ragland of Kentucky. Col. Davis was ^Iso born in Kentucky, and was a cousin of Jeff Davis, President of the Confederacy. 78 "Col. Davis having once resided for a long while in Illinois, the conversation naturally turned upon her times and men. He said he was personally and intimately acquainted with President I^incoln — ^was often associated with him, as well as against him, in law cases before the Supreme Court of Illinois ; that they, as members of a committee of the Constitutional Convention (I think of 1844 or 5) of Illinois,, drafted the most of the Constitution. He said that he knew the mother of I^incoln ; that he- was raised in the same neighborhood in Ken- tucky, and that it was generally understood,, without question, in that neighborhood, that Lincoln, the man that married the President's- mother, was not the father of the President>. but that his father's name was Enloe. "These facts I have a distinct recollection of.. Col. Davis died about three years ago, in Den-^ ton, Texas." COL. JOHN D. CAMERON. Col. Cameron was a native of North Caro- 79 lina. He graduated with honor from the University, and was a man of deep and varied learning and spotless reputation. He was a professional journalist ; was many years editor of the Asheville Citizen^ a bright daily. He was the author of the " North Carolina Hand- book." The congenial colonel, at a ripe age? has recently passed away. He wrote : "I am glad you have undertaken the * Lin- coln Mystery,' if such it can be styled, for you are on the spot, in the center of authority, and with the aid and cooperation of the relatives of the distinguished subject of the memoir. I believe all that I have heard. Col. A. T. Davidson is my reliable informant. I wish you success in your enterprise." As some of the foregoing witnesses have referred to Hon. Wm. H. Thomas and Col. Allen T. Davidson, we deem it proper to briefly tell who they are. Col. Thomas was born in Buncombe county, in a few miles of the scene of the event herein 8o recorded, about the year 1806. He was be- reft of his father at an early age. He studied grammar between the plow-handles, looking at his book at the end of each row. He acquired large real estate possessions, and by the time he reached manhood he amassed a fortune. He got into the good graces of the Cherokee chief, Yonaguskah ; was baptized by the old chief as his son and made his successor. He lived four years in Washington and read the law of nations under John C. Calhoun. He represented his section in both branches of the State legislature. He was one of the most distinguished men of the State in his day. Col. Allen T. Davidson is an aged and re- tired lawyer residing in Asheville. In the prime of life he was one of the ablest criminal lawyers in the State. He is the father of ex- Attorney-General Theo. F. Davidson. He enjoyed a most intimate acquaintance with the people who are the custodians of the Lin- coln tradition, and understood it substantially as herein revealed. COL. \VM. H. TPIOMAvS. Orator, Politician and Financier— a Brilliant and Versa- tile Genins. Father-in-law of Hon. A. C. Avery, ex-Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. A Con- temporary of Abraham Lincoln. He was a custodian of and a believer in the Lincoln-Enloe Tradition. CHAPTER IL A COMPARATIVE STUDY. The writer has been careful to accept the -statements of none but persons of the highest character relative to the North Carolina tradi- tion. As the written or historical account of Lin- coln's origin is nothing more nor less than tradition transferred to the printed page, we direct the reader to the most authentic per- sonal biography of Mr. Lincoln in existence — that of Herndon and Weik — the former g-en- tleman having been associated with Mr. Lin- coln in the practice of the law for more than a quarter of a century. In various instances Mr. Herndon admits that Mr. Lincoln's origin, so far as he had been able to trace it, was enveloped in gloom. He even admits that :in his intimate lifetime association with Mr. •82 Lincoln he never knew him to refer to his> ancestry in his hearing but once, and that Mr. Lincoln was always painfully reticent on the subject. Mr. Herndon does, however, go so far as to say that Mr. Lincoln divulged some fact with reference to his ancestry to a Chicago journal- ist by the name of Scripps, but at the same time, enjoined secrecy, and that Mr. Scripps died years ago without revealing it to any one. All that ]Mr. Lincoln ever said to Mr. Hern- don was a few words about his maternity. Averring that Mr. Lincoln's origin and ances- try were doubtful, if not unknown, in one breath, Mr. Herndon, in the next breath,, traces his origin and ancestry on either side to the third generation. This is mysterious, and can only be accounted for by the fact that the biographer was conscious that he had failed to find the real source of his illustrious subject, and his innate honesty sought ventilation in. these frequent admissions. S3 In fact, after reading Mr. Herndon's ac- count of Mr. Lincoln's origin, so strong and recurring are the insinuations in that direction, that one is lead to think that Mr. Herndon himself knew that Thomas Lincoln was not the actual father of Abraham Lincoln. Whether Mr. Herndon knew who Lincoln's real father was, it does not concern us to say, further than that we helieve he did not, and, therefore, acting the part of a close personal friend of Mr. Lincoln and his family, and at the same time endeavoring to be a true biog- rapher, he recorded Thomas Lincoln, the re- puted father of Abraham Lincoln, as his father, coupling with the record the sugges- tion that the public are entitled to the benefit of a grave doubt as to its truthfulness. In Mr. Herndon's story, or, as we shall here- after style it, the Kentucky tradition, there is presumptive evidence that Mr. Lincoln knew who his father was. In the North Carolina tradition there is direct and positive evidence 84 that he knew who his father was. In the Kentucky tradition there is no positive evi- dence that he ever revealed who his father was. In the North Carolina tradition there is- positive evidence that he did reveal w^ho his father was. The question naturally arises with the per- son who is not thoroughly familiar with Mr.. Lincoln's character, " Why did he withhold from the world the truth of who his father was ? And if, in any case he imparted this- knowledge, why was he choice in his reposi- tory of the same ? Why did he charge one person with temporary secrecy, as is intimated in the case of Scripps, and to another person accompany his divulgence with no restrictions^ as is plainly shown in the case of Davis? Why did he open this secret of his ancestry to comparative strangers and withhold it from his law-partner and close friend?" Our answer to the first question is, that be- fore Abraham Lincoln entered public life he ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Comparative likenesses of Lincoln and Enloe, according to this narrative half-brothers, arranged here to facili- tate the study of family resemblance as an argument for the contention of this book. WKSIvEY M. EXLOE, Age 8r. 85 was shut up in the wilderness of obscurity ; there was no occasion for the world to know who his ancestors were ; but when he came be_ fore the public as a leader, he very rapidly de- veloped into an adroit politician whose ambi- tion was boundless, and he sought encourage- ment and support beyond partizan lines ; there- fore, one of the probable reasons why he main- tained so studious a silence on the question of his origin might have been the politic one. In answer to the second question, Abraham Lincoln was a man of the nicest discriminat- ing sense, and he never lost an opportunity to use this rare endowment to promote, in an honorable way, his personal interest. He was the candidate of the anti-slavery party for pres- ident. He told Mr. Scripps, the official repre- sentative of a great anti-slavery journal, per- sonally, who his father was, but forbade fur- ther publication of the. matter, because his sa- gacity suggested, for reasons that are obvious^ that si!c!nce, in that quarter, would be golden. 86 He explained to Mr. Davis, who was not a newspaper correspondent nor a politician, but a plain citizen and voter, on the eve of the lat- ter's visit to his old home in North Carolina, that he was of southern extraction ; that his right name was Knloe, but that he had always gone by the name of his stepfather. Davis was going to the south ; to a democratic, pro- slavery State, to the home of Mr. Lincoln's traditional ancestors, and the shrewd presi- dential candidate knew that a little proud though quiet reminder by Davis at the distant south could not possibly impair his prospects for success. In answer to the last question, Mr. Lincoln withheld himself, as to his origin, from Mr. Herndon, doubtless for the same reason that he refused to invest one of his greatest generals with an important mission on a certain occasion. This seeming incongruousness of character and conduct in Mr. Lincoln was one of his marked individualities. This will be better 87 understood, and we are quite certain the read- er's credence will be strengthened in the prob- ability of Mr. Lincoln's exercising this char- acteristic on certain occasions, when it is learned what a very distinguished authority has said of this very phase of Mr. Lincoln's character. The reader may then see how easy it was for him to reveal who his father was to Scripps and Davis and not even to Herndon or any one else so far as is known. We quote from the biography of Lincoln by the great and learned Dr. Holland : '' The fact was that he rarely showed more than one aspect of himself to one man. He opened himself to men in different direc- tions." The Kentucky tradition has it that Thomas Lincoln was married to Nancy Hanks in 1806. The North Carolina tradition says that Nancy Hanks lived in the home of Abraham Enloe in the early part of the century — one witness says about the year 1805 ; another says from 88 about 1803 to 1808. The traditional testi-^ mony establishes the fact that it was at the dawn of the century. Mr. Herndon produces the Lincoln family record purporting to have been taken origi- nally from the Lincoln family Bible. It shows to have been badly mutilated. The record has much the appearance of having been written consecutively and at one sitting. It is in the even handwriting of Mr. Lincoln's mature, professional years. It is, therefore, unknown how and when these dates, twenty- one in all, covering a period of sixty-three years, were furnished. A plausible way of accounting for this record may be seen in this simple surmise : Some time in the early fifties, certainly after the death of Mr. Lincoln's reputed, father, for the latter event is recorded among the last in the same handwriting, out of re- spect for the people with whom he had come up, Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to his step- 89 mother's, in Coles county, and stepping into a bookstore on leaving Springfield, he purchased a family Bible, containing a place for a record, with which to present his old stepmother, for whom it is said he entertained a tender feel- ing. This indeed would have been a very appropriate and touching memento of the occasion of his first visit after his reputed father's death. Then it was that the family record, as reproduced by Mr. Herndon, was penned down by Mr. Lincoln from his own memory aided by that of his stepmother. A most striking evidence of the probable cor- rectness of this surmise may be seen in the completeness of the record of the members of the family of his stepmother and the marked incompleteness of the records of Thomas Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, and Mr. Lincoln's alleged full sister. The birth of neither Thomas Lincoln nor Nancy Hanks is re- corded. Why the birth of Mr. Lincoln's mother is left out is a mystery when, accord- 90 -|ng to Mr. Herndon, it must have been well linowii. He' gives her age, at the time of her marriage to Thomas Lincoln, as twenty-three. Again the Kentucky tradition has it that there was a daughter born to Thomas and Nancy Lincoln in 1807, before Abraham, whom it records as first seeing the light 12th February, 1809. ^^^ there is a serious dis- crepancy here which Mr. Lincoln's biogra- phers have not been able to reconcile. Nicolay and Hay, the latter our late ambas- /sador to England and present Secretary of .State, both of whom were very intimate with Mr. Lincoln, say that this sister's name was Nancy and contend that such was her real name. Mr. Herndon contends persist- gently that her name was Sarah and that the family knew her by that name. Her name appears of record in the family Bible as Nancy. Mr. Herndon surmises that the record was torn away down to the word Nancy ^nd that the name was intended for that of 91 the President's mother. There is no evidence- that Mr. Lincoln ever paid any attention to this alleged sister. There was another Sarah in the family, daughter of Thomas Lincoln's second wife by her first husband. Mr. Lm- coln's alleged full sister is said not to have resembled him in stature, being short and thick-set. It is hard to imagine such stolid indiffer- ence and cold neglect on the part of such a man as Abraham Lincoln for an only sister— the nearest relative he had in the world. But such is the statement of his biographer. She was only two years his senior. At an early age Lincoln began to dream of his future ; as he grew older it seems that he would certainly become interested in this sister, and like Web- - ster who helped to educate his brother, and Davy Crockett who worked off his father's debts, have striven to bring her up to a position of respectability in society equal with the best of her class; if he had failed in.: 92 this ambition, and, as his biographer intimates, this failure had been followed by her misfor- tune, it had impressed the world more favor- -ably and deeply if his historian had said something like this : " Throughout her brief though sad career, from childhood to the grave, this only sister of Abraham Lincoln was fol- lowed by him, through evil as well as good report, with unremitting interest and tender solicitude." It was not in Abraham Lincoln's humane, manly heart to have been even careless of the Avelfare of an only sister. To this, as to his own origin as detailed by his biographer, there is attached a mystery. Lincoln, young though lie was when his melancholy mother died, Avas wise — he had been lead, doubtless by none other person save Nancy Hanks, through these dim paths into the light. A thorough examination of the Bible record, and the biography by Herndon alongside that by Nicolay and Hay, shows plainly that there A. LINCOLN. Traditionai. Son of Abram Eni^oe. Tor the further development of this comparative stud}-. WESLEY EXLOE AT THE Age of Sr. Son of Abraham EnIvOE. The most striking similarity iDetween Mr. Lincoln and Wesley Enloe is their physical formation and charac- teristics, which may be seen from the above compara- tive standing likeness. 93 is something mysterious and inexplicable in connection with this alleged sister. A painstaking comparison of the North Car- olina and Kentucky traditions will show but little discord relative to the probable date of Mr. Lincoln's birth and that of the marriao^e of Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln. The North Carolina tradition does not pretend to fix the date of Nancy Hanks's leaving Abraham Knloe's. It is no more definite than the early, ^^ery early, years of the century. Some of the witnesses do go so far as to say that Abraham Hnloe came from Rutherford to Buncombe about the year 1805, and that Nancy Hanks came with him. There is no conflict here as to the birth of Mr. Lincoln or the marriage of his mother, for Abraham Enloe's coming to Western North Carolina might have been a few years earlier, as another competent witness says about 1803. Mr. Herndon says the Washington county, Kentucky, records show that the marriage took place in 1806. 94 Passing the alleged birth of the whole (?) sister as too mysterious to admit of liiiman intermeddling, except to invite the reader to investigate for himself, we pass to the advent of our illustrious subject. The family record has it that Abraham I^incoln was born Feb- ruary 12, 1809. It is a fact of history that, at the time of the marriage of Thomas Lincoln to Nancy Hanks the former could neither read nor write, and while it is intimated that the latter could do both, it is extremely doubtful. Every whit of history and tradition in regard to this par- ticular personage is agreed that she was, almost from her infancy, without any one who- would have cared a fig whether she learned the alphabet. Moreover, it would have been the most natural thing in the world for Nancy Hanks to drift along in the woods without a thought of beginning a family record, even if she could have written, until after the lapse of more than a decade, perhaps, and the quarrels- 95 between Thomas Lincoln and the Enloes, as our tradition testifies, coupled with the ever- present reminder of the name, engendered in the heart of Thomas Lincoln a lasting hatred. One might guess, and hit it, that the record which should have read February I2th, 1806, was made to read February 12th, 1809. Let this be as it may, there is no question as to the fact that this family record of Abraham Lin- coln's birth is pure matter of tradition. There is no evidence that it was ever made matter of record in the family of Lincoln's reputed parents until 1 85 1, and then the only chance to get it done was for Lincoln to do it himself. Verily, who can say that Abraham Lincoln was not the architect of his own fortune? If one should say that, after reading the accounts of the utter barrenness and misery of Thomas Lincoln's home, for such is the record, and the perfect worthlessness of Thomas himself, one could not imagine such things as pencil and paper, far less pen and ink and 96 family record, placed there by Thomas's hands, or at his behest, there need be no cause for surprise. Indeed, if the historical account of Thomas I^incoln, the reputed father of the :great president, be true, it is exceedingly un- certain whether he worried over so small a thing as the advent of a child into the world, particularly if it were not his child. It is equally doubtful whether the poor, sad-hearted Nancy Hanks, brooding her life away in the thick gloom of a dirty hovel, ever entertained so delightful a fancy as that of possessing a family record. Mr. Lincoln himself, according to his l>iographers, accepted the 12th February, 1809, as the time of his coming into the world. But in this Abraham Lincoln, no doubt, found himself in a place somewhat like that in which Zeb Vance once discovered himself. Vance was a candidate for the legislature from Buncom.be and his competitor, who was much his senior, objected, among other points, MISvS ELIZA EXLOE. Daughter of Wesley M. Enloe, and Traditional Niece of Abraham Lincoln. 97 to Vance's yoiithfulness. In liis reply Zeb, in a very apologetic air, united with the most affected urbanity of manner, said : " Fellow citizens, I would cheerfully have been born earlier, if it had been in my power, but my father and mother gave me no earthly chance about the matter. I humbly beg pardon? therefore, and will try and do better next time." Mr. Lincoln knew very little more about this event of his life than did Zeb Vance about the similar event of his. Passing a great number of expressions in Mr. Lincoln's biography by Messrs. Herndon and Weik, we come to another which w^e cannot forbear to notice in this running com- parative review of the North Carolina and Kentucky traditions. Mr. Herndon says he called upon Mr. Lin- coln's stepmother after the death of Thomas Lincoln and the assassination of the president. The express purpose of his visit was to obtain data for his prospective biography of Mr. Lin- coln. Of course the very first thing he did 98 was to endeavor to find out all he could about Mr. Lincoln's parents. This old lady was very communicative until Mr. Herndon came to Nancy Hanks, the president's mother, and her predecessor in the Lincoln household, and here she was mournfully mum. What was there associated with the inoffensive name of Nancy that caused this old lady to exercise such significant reticence? We say inoffensive name, because the president's mother had been dead forty-six years, and could not come near the second Mrs. Lincoln. Could it possibly have been a false sense of virtue or a deeply respectful regard for Abraham Lincoln, or something less exemplary in this old lady that caused her to withold her knowledge of Nancy Hanks which was undoubtedly extensive and valuable, from Lincoln's historian? Could it have been that this successor of Nancy Hanks, who, in her early life, had lived in the same neighborhood in Kentucky in which it occurred, and who, before that, had been Tom Lincoln's sweetheart, was perfectly familiar 99 with the event herein related by three genera- tions of as good people as North Carolina affords? What was there about Nancy Hanks's life that she needs must decline to talk about or to impart to one who is entitled to all the facts? Here is another unsolved and unsolvable mystery, should it devolve upon the Kentucky tradition to do the solving. We leave it to the reader to say whether the North Carolina tradition furnishes the key to it. The Kentucky tradition vemfies ours when it says that at a very early age Nancy Hanks was taken from her mother and sent to live with some of her worthless relatives. Nancy Hanks herself, according to the biographer, was a spurious child, and doubtless never saw her father, and, being forced from her mother at a very early age, virtually became an orphan. The North Carolina tradition sa}s she was an orphan girl. In the face of this fact one can see how probable it is that Nancy Hanks, at a very tender age for one of her sex, lOO rambled into the world, and just as she was passing into young womanhood made her way to North Carolina and at last into the home of Abraham Enloe. Was there any particular and plausible rea- son why she should have drifted toward North Carolina and the house of Abraham Enloe? At that early time there was a steady stream of emigrants, travelers, horse-drovers and vis- itors flowing back and forth between Western North Carolina and Kentucky. It was an easy thing for a person to obtain company and means of transportation, by watching the chances, from one of these sections to the other. The special reason why Nancy Hanks might have made Abraham Enloe's home, in particu- lar, her destination might have been the fact that members of the Enloe family lived at that time in Kentucky, and in her immediate circle of acquaintance. Realizing that she was alone in the world,. Nancy Hanks decided to seek a new home ROBERT WALKER ENLOE. i^on of Wesley Enloe and Traditional Nephew of Abra- ham Lincoln. Compare this likeness with the Frontis- piece in Herndon's Lincohi, 2d Vol, lOI among strangers away from the touch of her worthless relatives, and begin the battle of life anew and on her own responsibility. Making known her resolve to some of the Kentucky Enloes, or having it suggested to her by some of them, she was accordingly directed to the Kentucky Enloes' North Carolina kinsman; and seeking and availing herself of the first opportunity, Nancy put her resolution into ef- fect, and soon found herself in the respectable and happy home of Abraham Enloe, of Ruth- erford first and afterward Buncombe county^ North Carolina. That she lived in his Bun- combe home there is not the shadow of doubt. That the Enloes lived among the Hankses- and Lincolns in Kentucky, both traditions are agreed and positive. According to the biographical description^ Abraham Lincoln did no more resemble Thomas Lincoln, his reputed father, than did the rankest stranger, either physically or in- tellectually. The only prominent character- 102 istics which he inherited from Nancy Hanks were his slender form and melancholy temper- ament. This melancholy itself in I^incoln and his mother may be accounted for in the unhappy step the latter was le^d to take in the Carolina mountains. We recommend to the reader a serious paral- lel study of these two traditions. The subject of Mr. Ivincoln's paternal origin has engaged the time and attention of some of the most dis- tinguished men of our country, and, in every instance the result of their investigations, owing to their never having gotten hold of the true thread of his beginning, has only been to elicit increased wonder and speculation — won- der because of the seemingly impenetrable myster^r that settled about so tall a figure in our history. Even Jesus of Nazareth, the world's example of lowliness, had the author- ity of heaven for his paternal origin and an in- telligent carpenter for his earthly ward, but if v/e are to accept the story of Lincoln's pater- 103 nal ancestor, as told by his biographers, he had neither. But if we shall believe the disinterested ac- counts of as honorable and trustworthy citizens as North Carolina contains, handed down to them by as good men and women as the early half of the nineteenth century produced, some of the mist will hereafter not hover around the true paternal origin of Abraham Lincoln, and there will be opened a new and sunnier ave- nue in which the honest and generous student of American history's most remarkable man may confidently walk. CHAPTER III. ABB LINCOLN'S HALF-BROTHER. Wesley M. Enloe is now eighty-seven years of age. He is six feet high. When he was in the prime of life he was taller. His build is slender with the appearance of toughness and sinewiness. His shoulders are narrow and somewhat rounded at the points. He is thin from chest to back. He stands almost erect, and his head, when standing or sitting, assumes an attitude indicative of firmness and decision. His hands and fingers are large and long, and his arms and legs are long and skeleton-look- ing. His legs, in length, are out of proportion to his body. His neck is long ; face lean ; forehead high and slightly sloping ; his nose is large and straight and his mouth is promi- nent — the underlip large and protruding. His head will require about a number seven and one-eighth hat. His walk and various body pos- I0 5 turings are inimitable. We shall desist from entering into a description of them for the simple reason that one who is familiar with Abraham Lincoln will say that we have pur- loined his physical idiosyncrasies. The truth is that the two men are so much alike that one hesitates to presume upon the much- abused credulity of mankind by a faithful por- trayal of the personal and bodily charac- teristics of Wesley Enloe, where Mr. Lincoln is well known, and feels constrained to cry out, with Philip of old : "Come and see." His address is plain, extremely unassuming and deferential, and one is soon at ease in his company. He has lived his whole life at the old homestead. He is well known over his own and adjoining counties. His character is beyond reproach, and it makes the western hillside of his life sunny and serene. He has always been an influential, well-to-do farmer^ whose judgment has safely been deferred to by his neigfhbors in matters of common sense. io6 The cuts of him here presented were made from poor kodaks, taken whenhe was eighty-one and eighty-eight years of age, after, by course of-nature, he had lost much of his manly vigor. There was no other likeness of him in exist- ence. A cut made from a good photograph, or from a portrait when he was fifty, would have answered the purpose of its appearing here more satisfactorily and fairly. We asked Messrs. D. Apple ton & Company, who are now in possession of Herndon's Lincoln, to kindly allow us to use the frontis- piece of their first volume as a comparative likeness with that of Wesley Bnloe, but they courteously declined to comply with our request. The likeness of Mr. Lincoln here referred to presents him clean shaven, and would have served our purpose of comparison better than any representation of him of which we have any knowledge. But with what we have it will not require an expert to detect the striking resemblance. I07 We also asked Messrs. Appleton & Co. to allow us to use a few passages from Hern- don & Weik's biography on condition of credit to the book, but they respectfully de- clined in this also. We have therefore been studiously careful not to quote a single one of that biography's misgivings (for such is one's feeling as he reads it) as to whether Mr. I^in- coln really had a paternal ancestor. We have, however, briefly compared the misty, winterish chapter of that book on Air. Lincoln's origin with our tradition, from what we had assimilated by reading it. We recom- mend to the reader who desires seriously to inquire into our tradition, as w^ell as to study judiciously the life of a truly great one among many of earth's so-called great men, the biog- raphy of Abraham I^incoln by Messrs. Hern- don & Weik. But to recur to the subject of personal resem- blance : We shall ask that the personal expe- rience of one out of scores of similar experi- io8 ences may suffice to convey to you some idea of the remarkable physical likeness which Wesley M. Bnloe bears to Abraham Lincoln, and the force with which it strikes even a casual observer : "In 18^4 Mr. Theodore Harris, of San Anto- nio, Texas, a cultured gentleman, was stopping in my town. He had heard the Lincoln tradi- tion, and was thoroughly acquainted with the personal characteristics of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Harris and myself made a trip up the Ocona Lufta river on a fishing and hunting expedition. Passing up the river, as we were Hearing Mr. Wesley Bnloe's place, we saw a man coming on foot down the road toward us. Before we were quite near enough to discern his features, Mr. Harris, in an animated but half-suppressed manner, pointed in the direc- tion of the man and said : ' That is Mr. Enloe of whom' I have heard — the alleged half- brother of Lincoln,' or words to that effect. Sure enough, on coming up to him, we found I09 that it was Wesley Enloe, for I had met him before. I confessed to Mr. Harris that I had never before witnessed so remarkable an inci- dent. He explained to me, as well as I can now recall his words, that ' the personal resem- blance of Wesley Enloe to Abraham Lincoln flashed upon him like a revelation.'" SlON T. EARI.Y. Dillsboro, N. C, Jan. 9, 1899. Mr. Early is an intelligent gentleman of unquestioned veracity. Mr. Harris lives in vSan Antonio, Texas. A RECAPITULATION. I am aware that in the heading of this chap- ter I have made a seemingly bold venture. The "half-brother" is not the son of Nancy Hanks by her second husband, for she was not married twice ; he is not the son of Thomas Lincoln by his second wife, for his name is Enloe ; his native State is North Carolina and not Kentucky. How, then, can he be Lin- coln's half-brother? Only in this way: A native of North Carolina is the father of Abra- ham Lincoln, and not Thomas Lincoln, of Kentucky. Have I slandered the great Lin- coln ? Have I slandered the nation ? Let the facts speak : First. — The tradition exists ; you have read the evidence in the foregoing chapter. Second. — The silence of history. Search his biographies and you are convinced. Do not Ill depend on isolated paragraphs from school his- tories not written in Kentucky nor Illinois. Why this silence ? Third. — A striking physical resemblance of the "half-brother" to Mr. Lincoln. I say "striking," because it has overcome high Lin- colnian prejudice and forced conviction. I shall give the experience of a gentleman, thoroughly trustworthy and competent, sub- stantially as he gave it to me. It has the greater weight because it comes from a gentle- man who, from my conference with him, I found wished the mist cleared away from Mr. Lincoln's paternity. I cannot give his exact words and have not obtained permission to give his name ; and so presume upon the reader's confidence in my veracity. However, I will here engage that if I am challenged I will promptly call on the gentleman in question to speak for himself. He said he visited the home of Wesley Kn- loe, and spent the night. As was his wont he 112 made a study of the former's physiognomy, though he had no case to make out. He said that Mr. Enloe did not suggest Lincoln. On returning to his home he was examining a de- scription of a statue of Lincoln in one of the leading magazines, and paused to study the representation — it suggested Wesley Enloe, and the resemblance carried conviction. On inquiring more carefully into the tradition, his conviction was confirmed. You say he would not have detected the re- semblance if he had not first heard the tradi- tion. But detecting the resemblance is differ- ent from being convicted by it. The observer was loath to believe the fact the resemblance proved. The skeptic will further object that the re- semblance is simply a coincidence. But the uniqueness of the coincidence is his misfor- tune. It is a coincidence on one side of which is a tradition authenticated by the most valid testimony, and on the other side the most re- 113 tmarkable silence of history ; a silence incred- ible if the tradition is apocryphal, for no other voice has ever been heard. One note of history would drown the alleged slander ; but it has not been heard. Are the tradition and the silence a co- incidence ? It cannot be said that this physical resem- blance was the beginning of the tradition, for the tradition existed before it was known, ac- cording to the testimony. It cannot be said that the story causes men to imagine there is a resemblance; skeptics do not possess imaginations of such conveni- ^ence. The country is full of close observers whose judgment cannot be affected by an idle story, whatever their prejudice may be. Fourth. — Clear, positive testimony. I need not recite the evidence bearing on the fact that ,a young woman named Nancy Hanks was the :mother of an illegitimate child by Abraham ^Enloe, and that she was conveyed to Kentucky, 114 either before or shortly after the birth of the child ; you read the evidence in Chapter I. If the evidence stopped here I should not feel myself vindicated against the charge of slander. There might have been another Nancy- Hanks. But take the testimony of Mr. Joe Collins of Clyde, N. C, a man of unquestioned ve- racity ; it runs as follows : He was in Texas y Judge Gilmore told him that he was raised in the community of Nancy Hanks, and she had a boy named Abraham. She married Tom Lincoln, a whisky distiller, and the boy took his name. He was about six years older than Abraham, but went to school with him, and he was the brightest boy in the community. Now this testimony, saying nothing of ther rest, must be gotten out of the w^ay before I am a slanderer. No one can reasonably doubt that Mr. Col- lins received these statements from a man who- "5 represented himself to him as Judge Gihnore. Now it devolves upon my prosecutor to do one of the following things : First, to prove that no such man as Judge Gilmorl spent his boyhood in the community with young Lincoln and his mother, and that Mr. Collins has been deceived. Establish it in this wa-y. Go, or send a representative to the community, and let the most diligent and general inquiry be made, and if nobody re- members a boy in that section (unless all the old people are dead, or gone from there, who remember young Lincoln) named Gilmore, old enough to have been Lincoln's schoolmate, and later left for Texas, or elsewhere, then we give up that part of the testimony. Mr. Col- lins has been deceived. But if it is remem- bered that a boy named Gilmore grew up in -that community about the age of Lincoln, and removed, the next thing to arrive at is that he -did not go to Texas, as far as the people know. His kinsfolk can tell you, or some of the old ii6 neighbors. If it is remembered that he livecB there at the time designated, and went to- Texas, the same people will know whether he- was a judge. If they do, the next thing to do^ is to establish the fact that he was not reliable. Few men reach the bench who are not reli- able. The old people in the community of his boyhood can give you his character there.- The people of the town in Texas where he resided can tell you whether he was a man of veracity. If he succeeds here Mr. Collins's- testimony is lost. If he fails the next thing to do is to produce a second Nancy Hanks who- was married to a second Thomas Lincoln, and who also had a boy named Abraham. If he fails in one of these things I am vindicated : if he succeeds in any one of them I am not con- victed there is other testimony. The positive character of the testimony in North Carolina and the wide-spread and in- eradicable conviction as to its truthfulness, and the suspicious silence of biography put the 117 burden upon my prosecutor to make general, painstaking and impartial investigation on the scene of Lincoln's boyhood, and show that there is nothing in the ''Nancy Hanks" story. Here he has the same disadvantages. This would seem to be my disadvantage, but it is his, in fact. Kentucky naturally aspires to the honor of producing the great Lincoln ; hence an in- superable reticence. The world will under- stand. But the retort may be made that in North Carolina the same aspiration, in some cases and the memory of the late unpleasant- ness in others, cause an undue readiness to ventilate the tradition. When you seek to obtain written statements you will find the retort of no great weight. It is too early for a Kentucky investigator to give in his expe- rience. There is* no readiness on the part of any one in North Carolina to ventilate the tradition. The contention of some of Mr. Lincoln^s' ii8 biographers is that, as we have noticed else- where, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks had a daughter older than Abraham, and that ends it. If this be so, there are two Nancy Hankses. For Abraham Enloe had some communication with one in Kentucky, who had a child by him named Abraham. It is a little unlikely that two women named Nancy Hanks would each have a son named Abraham, but it could have happened. Did it happen ? The existence of the Nancy with a daughter older than her Abraham is abso- lutely without proof. The record in the family Bible cannot be relied on. One biographer thinks the oldest daughter's name is mutilated. Some say her name was one thing, some another. Lincoln was utterly indifferent toward this sister. Could she have been akin to him? Those who persist in apotheosizing him had better say no. There is positive proof that Thomas Lincoln's second wife had a daughter named 119 Sarah. The record was not made till 1 851, in Lincoln's own handwriting. He could not afford to distinguish between the two sets ot <:hildren. Would he be likely to leave out •of the record his stepmother's daughter by her first husband? There is doubt about the first " Nancy" having the daughter older than her Abraham. The absence of positive proof of the older daughter's existence and an un- likely coincidence jeopardize the existence of the first " Nancy." But we know that the second " Nancy " — the North Carolina one — did exist and went to Kentucky under a cloud ; had a son named Abraham. Am I convicted? Not till the investigation is made, as above suggested, and none are found who know a fact which points clearly in the direction of Abraham Lincoln's ille- gitimate ancestry. As long as there remains a circumstance that suggests doubt, I am not convicted. It will be easier for the skeptic I20 to abuse than disabuse. If the testimony of Mr. Joe Collins is not demolished and the Kentucky investigator reports adversely, — and I await results, — we have a case clear as second-hand human evidence can make it. Do Abraham Lincoln's historians tell the truth w^hen they aver that, after diligent search where they were most likely to find, they are unable to satisfy themselves or even to say with assurance who Mr. Lincoln's father was ?' Does any other State or locality in this coun- try or elsewhere, lay claim to Lincoln's father beside North Carolina ? Does Kentucky her^ self lay serious claim to his paternal origin. " Of what ancestry we know not," says Mr. Watterson. Does North Carolina say who Abraham Lincoln's father was ? Are old, distinguished citizens, for example Col. Davis and Judge Gilmore, truthful ? Are three gen- erations of North Carolinians truthful? Is- the phenomenal physical likeness of Wesley Enloe, Lincoln's traditional half-brother^ 121 walking side by side with and, like a sturdy staff, supporting the North Carolina tradition, convincing and conclusive ? Reader, answer these questions, and say whether henceforth there is any doubt that Abraham Enloe, a strong, intelligent, leading North Carolina pioneer, was the great war president's father. CHAPTER IV. ABRAHAM ENIvOE. Abraham Enloe, the traditional father of Abraham Lincoln, was the son of Gilbert Enloe, and was born in York district, South Carolina. The first of his American forebears came from Scotland about the middle of the seventeenth century. They landed first in Maryland, but subsequently moved to South Carolina, where they settled. They were school-teachers. Abraham's father, being a man of more than ■ordinary mental endowment, the son received the rudiments of a good education. On com- ing of age he stepped from under his father's roof into the world to seek his fortune. As a boy he was obedient and industrious and had made the most of his father's splendid tuition. He was, therefore, well equipped 123 for one of his day for the struggle for life. He was of an excellent temper and judgment while yet a youth. He illustrated these in his choice of a country and clime in which to ex- ercise his vigorous young faculties, as well as in the selection of a wife to share with him in their fruitions. He sought a home first in Rutherford county, N. C, where he became acquainted with a Miss Egerton, a yoking lady of intellect and culture and a member of one of the best fam- ilies in that section of the State. Their ac- quaintance at once ripened into genuine affec- tion, and they were married and settled down to farming. While a citizen of Rutherford county he established a reputation for uprightness of character which is still recalled with pride by his neighbors, and which followed him to his new home and throughout his life. About the year 1803 or 1805, while early settlers were " staking their claims " further west, Abraham Enloe emigrated from Ruther- ford county and stopped on the Ocona Lufta, at the base of the Great Smoky mountains in Buncombe county. In the settlement of his new home he en- countered the usual difHculties of the pioneer. His granddaughter, a Mrs. Floyd, a bright and entertaining woman, said she remembered hearing her grandfather recount his experi- ences in coming to, and while trying to estab- lish himself on, Ocona Lufta. The journey from Rutherford over great mountains and across dangerous streams was fraught with labor and peril. They were often compelled to improvise causeways for creeks and rivers, or to construct breastworks and dig wider the ways of the more primitive adventurer along the almost perpendicular mountain sides. When they had thus reached the summit of the high mountains, so steep was the descent, that they were obliged to tie good bits of trees to the rear ends of their wagons to prevent 125 stampeding the teams. It was not infrequent that, because of the absence of any way save a deer or Indian trail, they packed their effects piecemeal on their backs over formidable mountains. He was, however, fortunate in the choice of a stopping place. The Ocona Lufta is in the center of the highlands of the South, midway between the Hiawassa, Tennessee, and Nanta- hala on the one side, and the Tuckuseegih, French Broad and Swannanoa on the other. It was a land to make the heart of the strong man grow stronger. The soil was rich. The trees were original. The air was pure, the water was crystal, and the forests were alive with a very great variety of birds and animals. It was a land whose star was not wormwood, but bright hope. The only neighbors that were near to him after he had built his house were three families who had accompanied him from Rutherford, and the Cherokee Indians, in the heart of w^hose region he was. 126 There were other white families living within a distance of from twelve to fifty miles. A settlement in those days embraced a circuit of from twelve to fifteen miles, and was made up of as many families. It was such a settlement as this of which Abraham Enloe was the cen-^ tral figure and benefactor. In obedience to an ancient custom of mankind, each society or neighborhood, however small, must have its leading spirit and par-excellence adviser. Par- ticularly must this needs be the practice of a community where the frequent hostilities of aboriginals, whose grievance is by no means imaginary, must be met. The common inter- est must be healthful and steadfast. Abraham Enloe built his house in a fertile valley overlooking the Ocona Eufta, whose banks in summer are a continuous string of bou- quets — Rhododendron, ivy and honeysuckle — to this day. It is an incident worthy of note, here, that this house is still standing, but slightly remodeled; and has been in four coun- 127 ties without being removed from its original foundations. It is a typical pioneer abode. One large log house with doors in either side directly opposite each other, and a chimney at one end built of natural boulders, with a re- markably wide fireplace. A sure reminder of the brotherhood of the frontier community was the uniform nature of the settler's habitation. The style and value of the houses were as near the same as primi- tive ingenuity and limited resources could make them. No envy rose in the breast of the pioneer because of striking contrasts. The cabin did not droop and shiver in the shadow of the palace. Every man that crossed the settler's threshold crossed it like a knight. Notwithstanding Abraham Enloe was gen- erally absorbed in the more serious concerns of life, he found time for the then profitable diver sion of hunting. The long-barreled flintlock was ever " picked and primed " for emer- gency use. The haunts of the deer, bear, and 128 wild turkey were just outside his euclosure, aud many are the thrilling stories of delightful sjDort in which he was always joined by some of his neighbors. On his broad doorstep and about the clean yard sat or slumbered long- eared deerhounds, watchful curs or surl}^ mas- tiffs. Each of these bided patiently his call to dinner or duty, and all were indispensable in their respective spheres as followers of the chase, guards of the plantation and protectors of the home. Returning once from the home of Hon. Felix Walker, whose place was west of the settlement a distance of fift}' miles, Mrs. Enloe was amused to see her husband alight from his horse, across whose withers was a white bag, either end of which was strangely animate. Her wonder was turned to ridicule when she learned that the queer sack contained four fine deerhound puppies, the gift of the clever con- gressman. The pioneer would almost as ■readily have given up his rifle as his dogs. The 129 keen solicitude which the settlers felt and manifested for these noble animals and the tender attachment which they in turn made known to their masters in their heroic rencoun- ters with savage beasts and more savage men, appeal to our highest sensibilities. Their estimation was shared by men, women and children, and this, no doubt, helped to tie the Gordian knot of good neighborhood. Abraham Enloe owned the best, and at first the only, horses in the neighborhood. He greatly valued these splendid animals, as well for their beauty as utility, and allowed nothing to go undone that would make them appear to the best advantage. He was by profession a farmer, and early set a progressive pace for his neighbors in his chosen calling. He also possessed the only forge and blacksmith tools in the settlement, with which he kept in repair the farming im- plements of himself and neighbors. There were no stores, and the nearest mar- I30 kets to which the settlement had access were Augusta, Ga., and Charleston, S. C. To these places, distant hundreds of miles, over the roughest of country and rudest of way, the settler hauled his produce or drove his live stock, which he eagerly exchanged for the necessities of civilized life. Abraham Knloe possessed the only wagon in the settlement, and this served to transport, at one trip, the salt, powder and domestic con- sumed by the entire settlement a twelvemonth. Learning, on a certain occasion, that the set- tlement's meager supply of salt was exhausted, he harnessed his team, collected a few choice steers from his herd, and started for Augusta, Ga., where afresh supply of this indispensable was procured, not only for himself, but for each of his neighbors. He was a justice of the peace, an office of no little dignity in primitive times, and he was implicitly turned to as the final arbiter in ad- justing differences between his neighbors. He I 131 was the trusted adviser of the politicians, great and small of his party, with whijm he came in contact. The relations existing be- tween himself and the Hon. Felix Walker, the first member, of Congress from the Buncombe district, were the most cordial and intimate. It was this same Felix Walker, a discreet leader of frontiersmen, who, while delivering himself of legislative responsibility, in a speech of some length in the House of Rep- resentatives, and observing what he construed to be an expression of weariness on the face of the Speaker and members, raised himself to his full height and assured them that he was aware of the fact that he had spoken at some length ; that what he was saying might not interest them, but that it was his firm re- solve to continue until he had done, and then, with reassured emphasis, he said : " Mr. Speaker, I wish the gentlemen of this House to understand that I am speaking for Buncombe !*' Thus originated the phrase "speaking for Buncombe." 132 The house of Abraham Enloe was head- quartefs for the gospel. The pioneer preacher^ no matter his creed, found there a warm wel- come and partook of his hospitalities without the semblance of grudge. Public worship was one of the strongest bonds of these early communities. At a period too early for the log church they came,, for many miles, to the house of some promi- nent settler to an annual or semi-annual ap- pointment of such men as brave old Cartwright or the brilliant Bascom. To them worship was not a mere diversion. ' It was a solemn re- sponsibility and means of power that must be seriously regarded. Earnestness fitted them like a garment. They came to the place ap- pointed for worship, if it was the mild season, in their shirt-sleeves, with their rifles on theii: shoulders. They were the synonym of sim- plicity, and every declaration based upon a straight interpretation of the Bible they accepted eagerly and without question. ^33 With them there were few base coins ; most were rincrinof briofht gfold. From them have sprung, like wheat from a virgin soil, the har- vest of heroic men, whose mission it is to meet and turn aside the wild, babbling stream of innovation which now and then threatens to mingle its noxious floods with the old abiding river of human progress. Abraham Bnloe's house was often converted into a settlement sanctuary. It was little more than a half-dozen miles from his house to the capital of the Cherokees. His policy toward these children of the forest was benevolence — the true neighbor ; while white men of other settlements often provoked a "hurrying to and fro" upon the war-path, Abraham Bnloe and his dusky neighbors snugly reclined in the bosom of peace. Abraham Enloe was a man of great con- servatism and judgment. There was no rash- ness in his nature. He, therefore, sought, among the first things after settling in West- 134 ern Carolina, to establish a permanent friend- ship between himself and the Chief and most influential men of the Cherokees. He ever enjoyed the respect and confidence of the band, and his relations with the two chiefs, Yona- guskah and Sawinookih, were the most inti- mate and pleasant. It was indeed fortunate for Abraham Enloe and his neighbors that they were contempo- raries of such dynasties as those of Yonagus- kah and Sawinookih. These chiefs were both men of great natural ability, especially Yona- guskah. He was pronounced by a competent judge, who knew both well, the intellectual peer of John C. Calhoun. The following story, as told by Colonel W. H. Thomas, who was an eye-witness, will serve to illustrate the superstitious wisdom of this old Chief : The Cherokees, like most men of their race who come too near the blessed influence of Caucasian civilization, became addicted to strong drink. Yonaguskah, though SAWIXOOKIH, The First Chief Cherokees, in His Old Age and in Civilian Apparel. 135 himself an occasional victim of its subtle em- braces, determined upon the prohibition of strong drink among his entire band. Sud- denly he fell into a stupor. So deep and mysterious was his slumbers that the whole town heard of it. They came flocking to his side and looked long and sadly upon him and decided that he was dead. In agony they waited for the return of their venerable Chief to his senses and his wondrous walks and ways. But no sign of life appeared, and over a thousand of his faithful children deter- mined, in deep sorrow, to celebrate their an- cient and impressive rite of funeral and sep- ulture. Forming in single file they danced around the prostrate Chief, mumbling their weird death-chant. Suddenly, in the midst of the solemn per- formance, Yonaguskah arose, and standing in their midst with the inspiration of a prophet and majesty of a king, told them that he had been translated to the " happy hunting- 136 grounds," and that while there he had com- muned with the Great Spirit relative to their happiness. He said he was impressed that intemperance would be the means of their extermination, and advised them to turn their backs on the "fire-water" of the white man. He said he had served them for over forty years without asking for a cent of pay, and the only thing he exacted was their obedience. With profound feeling he bemoaned his own and his people's mistake, and concluded by directing Colonel Thomas to act as clerk and write the following : "The undersigned Cher- okees, belonging to the town of Qualla, agree to abandon the use of spirituous liquors." Gravely stepping forward the old Chief signed first and was then followed by the whole town. For many years this pledge was kept inviolate, and at last, when some yielded to the influence of the whites and were lead to break it, Yonaguskah established the " whip- ping-post" and enforced his simple pledge ^2>7 with the rigor of an English statute in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Sawinookih was a man of great native wit. In one of his visits, as Chief, to Washington he imbibed a little too prodigally of *' fire- water," and wandering around in the bewilder- ing glare of lights and city pageant (for it was in the night), he became "lost," and leaned up against the corner of a building for the night. In the midst of his dozings a passer-by accosted him with, " Hello, Indian^ aren't you lost?" to which he instantly re- plied : " No ! Injun not lost, hotel lost ! " Abraham Enloe was a large stock-dealer for his day. It was his custom to drive annually horses, mules and cattle to southern markets, and by this and the acquisition of large tracts of land and the slave-trade, he accumulated considerable means and established a reputa- tion at home, and in the marts of the south, for preeminent judgment and far-reaching busi- ness acumen. 138 He trafficked in negroes all the way from Western North Carolina to Florida. From the latter, on one occasion, he brought home twenty. He was kind to his slaves. A practical example of his benevolent policy toward them v;as shown in his habitual custom of reading and expounding to them the Holy Scriptures each Sabbath. He is described by those who were intimate with him to have been possessed of a fund of anecdote. He was also rich in practical hu- mor. When he would take the Sunday morn- ing's 'Hansy-dram, " of which the pioneer was famously though temperately fond, he would call up his little negroes, and causing them to stick out their big under lips, he would, with much dignity, pour a teaspoonful on each protruded lip to the infinite amusement of the family and the exquisite pleasure of the little ebonites themselves. In his private life Abraham Enloe was cor- dially esteemed by his neighbors. In his 139 family he ruled with patience and firmness. He was the father of nine sons and seven daughters. The sons all lived to man's estate, the only surviving one of whom says that each of the nine remained under parental con- trol until he was of age, and not one was ever known to rebel against his father. In personal appearance he is described by the family and those who knew him as having been a very large man, perhaps more, not less, than six feet high. Not corpulent but muscular and sinewy. His head was large and fine. Forehead, nose and mouth promi- nent. His hair was stiff and black. His complexion was inclined to tawny. Unfortunately there is no likeness of him in existence. Men of his time didn't set much by pictures, and artists were scarce in the land. He was undoubtedly a man of extraordi- nary mind. It is the universal consensus that he was the strongest character in his sec- tion, as a plain, practical, unaspiring citizen. 140 As heretofore intimated, his judgment was •clieerfully deferred to or eagerly sought by his fellow citizens on subjects and occasions of moment. He was simple, honest, brave ; an ardent • friend of truth. He hesitated not to go on toilsome errands of mercy for his bereft neigh- bors. He asked nothing in return but the an- swer of a good conscience. He was the best type of the civilian; plain, honest and unsel- fish. He had faults, but they were not such as rise from a mean heart plunged in moral tur- pitude, but those to which the flesh is easily heir. He was not a saint, but what is better here below, a nature's nobleman. CHAPTER V. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Born none knowetli when or where, he came np out of the bramble of obscurity. Whether he first saw the light in the woods, on the roadside, or in a dingy hovel, it matters not He was nature's child, and nature nursed him. With her blessing she dropped him on the world and bade him live. He was first a help- less infant, then a little toddling child, and then a boy, but unlike other boys. He was awkward and gawky ; his legs and arms were longer, his hands and feet were larger than those of other boys. He was more diffident and silent than any other boy. At seven he went to school and learned to read ; at ten he learned to write. He was seri- ous and thoughtful ; not overmuch energetic in body, but stint and duty urged him on, and 142 he wielded the ax at the age of eight and did the milling. Reaching youth he remained in school, pro- cured books and applied himself diligently. He stepped at once to the head of his class, and when a pretty schoolmate, in spelling a word, hesitated to know whether to say z orj, he pointed to his eye, she spelled it, and the teacher, unobservant, passed on. He loved books. He eagerly devoured all there were in the secular home library of three books and turned his eye in search of others. He made himself familiar with the best litera- ture of the neighborhood for miles around. His nightly companions were such sacred, old standards as the Bible, ^sop's Fables, Robin- son Crusoe, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Weems's Life of Washington. He borrowed the latter from a penurious neighbor, placed it in the crack between the logs of the cabin overnight ; there came a rain, which wet the book, and the boy carried it to the owner to 143 assess the damage; the owner said seventy-five cents, and young Lincoln pulled fodder three days to satisfy him. At the aofe of sixteen he wrote a dissertation on temperance and essayed poetry. He grew to be a man, and he wanted, instead of his buckskin, a pair of brown jeans panta- loons, and he split for an old lady four hundred rails for every yard of cloth it took to make them. He read, he wrote, he spoke, he lec- tured, he farmed, he split rails, he pitched quoits, he joked, he wrestled, and sometimes he fought a fisticuff. He became a surveyor ; studied the statutes of Indiana and practiced stump-speaking in the fields to the hands. He assisted in the management of a ferry across the Ohio river at thirty-seven and one- half cents a day ; was noted as being the strong- est man in the settlement, and w^as equally famous for writing papers on the science of gov- ernment. He acted as bow-hand on a boat in a 144 voyage to New Orleans at a salary of eight dollars a month, and made three thousand rails for one man, walking three miles each day to his work. He was a religious free-thinker and an adept at anecdote. He became a loaf in New Salem, Illinois, and then clerk to an election board. He was a miller and then a clerk in a store. He was a merchant, and studied English. He was a hero in an interesting love-affair, and came near fighting a duel. He was captain of a company in the Black Hawk war and read law meanwhile. He was elected to the Legislature, and later was admitted to the bar. He was one of the foremost lawyers in the State of Illinois, and the rival of Stephen A. Douglas for the heart of a charming blue-blooded girl ; he vanquished the judge and obtained her hand in marriage. He was a frequent contributor to political journals, and attained a local prominence as a campaigner and manager. ^45 He was elected to Congress and never opened iliis mouth except to vote. He stepped upon the hustings against the -^'Little Giant," and attracted the attention of the country by his resource and facility at .repartee. He was an orator of rare felicity, and a .statesman of extraordinary sagacity. He endeavored to lecture on "The History ;and Progress of Inventions " and ignominiously ;failed. He was invited to Cooper Institute to :Speak ; he accepted the invitation, spoke on "The Political Issues of the Day," and paved his way to the presidency. He was nominated for the Chief Magistracy •of the nation over the trained diplomat and statesman, William H. Seward, and was elected •over three other candidates, one of whom was his brilliant old-time rival, Stephen A. Doug- las. He occupied the executive chair through the most horrible war of all history; was ^elected to a second term during the progress of 146 that war, and just as he was adjusting his great"- faculties to lead the nation into a glorious peace, he was stricken by the red hand of an assassin. History affords no parallel to Abraham Lin- coln. In the classification of the world's heroes he must be grouped alone. In the commingling and jargon of the com- mon mass, he stood the tall representative of a^ new type. His ways were of his own making. With his face set straight forward, his long arms swinging heavily, he strode so mightily that- not only his own countrymen did list, but his footfall echoed around the world. Now he rose up, up, until he reached the heights, and then he grappled with the earth, and made those who touched him feel that they had touched a kindred clay. His was a many-sided nature — an antitheti- cal life — and his career was as mixed and. varying as his nature was unique and odd. 147 Abraham Lincoln will never be understood. :He may be appreciated, but it will require an exhaustive stud}^ of his character to enable one to do so. He possessed an intellect deep and keen. He could se'e as far into profound and difficult questions as any man contemporaneous with him, or, doubtless, who has followed him. He had a will — a will that was volatile or immovable at the command of his soul. On subjects of grave import his will, becoming fixed, was not to be swerved a hair's breadth ; ■ on questions indifferent and small his volition was the obedient child of policy and expedi- ency. His mind was no less subtle than logi- cal in its operation. His judgment was as • clear and as unerring as mortal's usually is. His heart was large, good and tender as a child's. It was responsive in the highest and best degree. No one in distress ever appealed to him in vain. A great, picturesque rock in .a dry and thirsty land, the weary traveler -.rested in its shade. 148 As Lincoln emerged from tlie wilderness^- into civilization's highway men looked on him and were amazed. Whence did he come and whither was he bound ? Lincoln beheld their wonder. He read their very thought, and herein was his mystery. In his intuitive knowledge of men he towered, like the giant, he was, far above his fellows. He early, how early we know not, became conscious that he was a man^ and learned to^ associate with men as such. He did not have to come down on the common human level — he walked up and down between the clods - from which he sprang and to which he sadly sank. In matters of conscience the angel of the better nature was his guide. He was not a Christian in the popular sense, traceable no doubt to his early bereavement of a mother. He had no faith in the orthodox sense ; his- faith was reason — the logic of cause and effect. His reliance was firm in God and immortality ;, his religion materialized in deeds whose end. 149 was to make humanity better. He was not a dreamer, but an intense practicalist. Of this his life bore abundant evidence. By this it is not meant that he could not scheme or plan on the largest scale. This he did. But like Alexander and Napoleon, he executed as rap- idly as he planned. His genius was the most fertile and versatile. No exigency arose to confound his faculties and baffle his resource. In the fiercest administrative storm he stood on the topmost billow like a Norseman of old unterrified. In the midst of these perplexi- ties, when his associates were all dismay, he related a humorous anecdote about some good farmer in Illinois, and transformed the scene of distraction into hilarious uproar. He believed in the right and ability of man- kind to govern themselves. He did not hesi- tate at the same time to avow " that all of the people might do wrong part of the time." He was a man of the most ' profound prin- ciple. He was preeminently a man of policy. Principle was an end, policy was the mears. He was courageous physically, intellectu- ally, morally. He shrank not from physical contests the most taxing. He was eager to cross mental swords with the most brilliant. He antagonized old, sacred beliefs in poli- tics and religion with weird audacity, and his antagonist always bore away marks of the engagement. He always weighed well his words and cal- culated coolly his acts ; their effect was reck- oned before they left him. He was ambitious. He was aspiring. He was restless. He sighted his object, and then thought and planned and strove to reach it. He was certain of his powers, and he wielded them with a careful hand. There was no slumbering of talents with him ; no rust nor ashes with the broken pottery of neglect in the paths he frequented. Like some precious tree that regales the passer-by with its delightful perfume, he im- 151 parted a sweet influence to all who passed through the atmosphere of his being. While others studied books, Lincoln studied men. Here was another and real secret of his life. From his plain Western home he looked abroad and surveyed the field. With a wise and cunning eye he looked at the East with her Phillips and her Sumner ; the North with her Seward and her Cameron ; the Middle and West with their Corwin and Chase; men of his own political party ; men of vaulting ambi- tion and commanding talent, and wondered how he might pass through them into the White House of the nation. He outwitted, outth ought, outdid a rival, no matter how great, and then looking back from the hill of success, he bound up that rival's broken hope by an unseen stratagem. Thus he made Secretaries, Generals, and Justices of the Supreme Court. He was a superb tactician. He laid his plans with the utmost precision, and these rarely miscarried. 152 When he formulated a purpose he often con- suited the mind of others, but in the end he preferred his own judgment, and upon it he risked the issue. He was frank and open in his general inter- course, but there was a well-known line in his character where publicity stopped and privacy began. This discipline made his insight into the public men with whom he dealt approxi- mate omniscience. He knew their strong points, their virtues, and he knew their faults and foibles. He read their whims and their caprices as one would read a book. He unbosomed himself to none; he risked many and trusted few. He collided with men who, in some particular field, outshone him for a moment, but it was only for a moment ; he had but to stand up and his simple personality overshadowed them. There was but one other person who possessed such simplicity and majesty of character in our country, and that was Robert E. Lee. ^53 He knew the people — the plain folks, as he was pleased to style them — as no man has known them since the nation was born. He was of them. Through the white portals of the capitol of the republic he looked into the lowly doors of millions of cabins each day of his four years official incumbency. He saw the struggle and toil ; the grief and tears — he felt them. As their faithful servant he re- membered them and conducted their affairs with a view to their peace, prosperity, and hap- piness. He knew their mode of thinking. He was conversant with their manner of speaking. He was familiar with their way of acting. He thought, spoke and acted as if he were in their presence. When he saluted them or took them by the hand, there was a meeting of friends. He was the prince of plain men, and they were his neighbors. He communicated with them in simplest speech enlightened by homely illustration. With an endless supply of fable and anecdote he amused and instruc<-ed. 154 He loved and served the people, and the peo- ple loved and honored him. When it came to dealing with the people he had no patience with the time-server. He was bold when he dealt with the people. He invited the most rigid scrutiny of his public acts. He promul- gated his conviction or policy, defended it through every stage of its progress, and if it failed of its object he acknowledged his mis- take and assumed the responsibility. He sounded the public necessity and sought to satisfy it. Trickery and simulation were foreign to him. If he thought he was being imposed upon, woe be to the impostor. If it was with, ■out his power to aid a friend, he frankly told him so. He was charitable in the high catholic sense. He had a tender fellow-feeling for mankind. He knew the many weaknesses to which the flesh is heir. He was sure to see the suffering heart, and no one ever touched it more often to soothe. 155 He frequently withdrew from the multitude and communed with himself. He came forth stronger when he had encountered a difficulty. He left the dross in the fire ; sorrow and trib- ulation were his earthly lot. " Myrrh and aloes and ivory palaces " turned not his head ; he was touched but not influenced by praise ; he was often mortified but never unmanned by criticism. The ludicrous filled him with life ; sorrow and suffering melted his heart He never fawned upon the public or an indi- vidual, and he was thought by some to be sel- fish and austere. He never meddled with the affairs of others, and he was accused of seeking personal aggrandizement. In the practice of the law he was natural and urbane, and he was called a monkey and a clown. He was cautious and conservative in the exercise of his official functions, and he was suspicioned and criticized by the impetu- ous who should have been his warmest friends. As president, he was not impervious to ad- 156 verse political criticism or personal detraction, and he made fewer mistakes than any man who has yet filled that exalted station. In private life he was natural, original to the point of eccentricity. He was by nature a melancholy man ; he drew it from his mother. The purple linea- ments of this inward ghost shone from his pale and haggard face. At times this spirit well-nigh overcame him, but he asserted his mighty will. He courted the nymph of hu- mor ; he gathered stories full of mirth and moral and told them to his company, and the wide prairie, the disordered law-office, or the executive chamber rang with jocund laughter. He was a patient husband, a lenient, loving father. He was no conventionalist ; he cared less than nothing for fad or fashion ; he was insensible to gossip and had no part or lot in the little strivings of small men. With him there were no petty likes and dislikes — noth- ing mean or groveling. He hated a simper- ^57 ing flatterer or growling churl with a mortal hatred. He was forgiving, sympathetic, kind — a broad-minded, great-hearted gentle^nan. He was an American — the first American illustrating the existence of a new national type. He was the first popularly acknowl- edged representative of the plebeian cast ; the first prince of American peasants, and lifting him upon their shoulders they proclaimed him the first yeoman of their freehold. Of Southern origin, born in the South, he came up on a Western prairie. To Southern inheritance was added Western environment. To Southern warmth and generosity, springing from Southern sun and soil, was added the freedom of the Western plain and the rough habits of Western life. He was by nature and education the product of rural energy. The South and West were the home of this ele- ment. Of this element Lincoln was the un- trammeled child. His parents never dreamed •of Northern or Eastern sticklings for ancient 158 transatlantic customs and laws. Such were his early surroundings, and so soon did he leave the South that he never had any preposses- sions in favor" of human slavery. He was the simple though strong individual^ and then the oracle of his class — the masses everywhere. The blessings of his virtuous- mind and provident hand in due time began to fall upon all. His influence no partizanship could destroy or faction avoid. He was a patriot. He loved his country for his country's sake. He sought to cement the common interest and advance the common weal. He was a steadfast believer in, and supporter of, the Constitution. He studied and con- strued it. He advocated a perpetual Union, and would not admit the right of any State to withdraw from it. He labored as no man ever has or will to preserve the Union unim- paired. This was the sole and only object of his chief magisterial life. He was opposed to- 159 the extension of human slavery into new ter- ritory, but "it was never his inclination or purpose to interfere with that institution in the States where it did exist." He deprecated the idea of freeing the colored race and turn- ing them loose, clothed with equal rights> among the white people of the South. ■ If he had lived it never would have been done. He was the great central, controlling spirit on the Union side, and he waged the war on purely defensive grounds. The noble people of the North and East, though blood of our blood, did not realize the situation. Their splendid humanitarianism w^as too long-ranged. Not by striking the shackles from the colored race, for that was right, but by making him the equal of all of us whom they would not ac- knowledge the equal of a single man of them, they decreed that we should wander in the wilderness of problem and uncertamty, not forty years, but indefinitely. Lincoln under- stood this, and his great heart went out in i6o sympathy for the bleeding South. He knew that he was the son of her bosom and that her children were his brethren. He labored as long as there was a shadow of hope to avert war. When its crimson tide began to flow, he proposed to buy the slaves and stop it. Failing in this, he endeavored to colonize them beyond the choler of unhappy memory and the antipathy of strange blood. Persistent, firm and gentle in his memory of the South, he bore up against the pressure from the North to arm the black man against his former master. But when at last he saw that unless something was done, his fondest dream would come to naught, he reluctantly gave way, ^nd a portion of the slaves were made to lift their hands against us. The stricken South lost this noble friend — her filial scion — when least she could aft'ord it. Wilkes Booth might w^ell have stayed the deadly hand, for if he had the South had journeyed round the valley through which she i6i is passing. But happily the time is now when the generous people of the North and East who, with the wisdom of prophecy, picked Mr. Lincoln up at his opportunity and placed him where God intended, are seeing their mistake, and with the same candor and zeal which marked their strife to bring about our problem, are essaying to help us solve it. America has produced and will produce but one Lincoln. The world may now see but shall not soon understand this enigmatical man. CHAPTER VI. THE ENLOES. It is not only interesting but of historical importance to produce, in this connection, a short account of the Enloe family. This family does not lay claim to a niche in the nation's Westminster, nor does it accept a plat in its potter's field. It rather takes its place in the cemetery of honor and respecta- bility. This is not meant to refer so much to descent as to position in society. It is not our object to lay for it " claim to long descent.'^ This doubtless would bring with it some diffi- culty, and yet it would be no more difficult in the case of the Enloes than in that of any other ordinary family of the English-speaking people. In support of this last proposition, permit me to quote a no less eminent authority than MRS. ANDREW J. PATTOX. Daughter of Weslev Enloe. i63 Justice Walter Clark : " William the Conque- ror ascended the throne of England A. D. 1066. Allowing thirty-three years as a gen- eration, there have been twenty generations, counting his children then living as the first generation. Many people have several chil- dren, others have more. It is certainly not an immoderate calculation to average each descendant as having three children, for if each descendant with his wife had left only two children, the population would have stood still, whereas less than a million inhabitants of the British Isles of that day have grown to be nearly forty millions there and seventy mil- lions on this side of the water. William the Conqueror had four sons and six daughters ; averaging each of these as having three chil- dren, with the same average for each of their descendants down to the present, and the ten children of William in the present or twenty- fifth generation, by a simple arithmetical cal- culation, would have 2,824,295,314,810 de- 164 scendants now living in the British Isles, in America, in the colonies, or wherever men of British descent are to be found. As this is fully twenty-five thousand times as many as there are people of British descent on the globe, there must be an error in the above calculation. There are two. First: While an average of two children to each de- scendant is too small, since that average would have kept the population stationary, an aver- age of three is too high, as that is an increase of fifty per cent, every thirty years, an average which few countries other than the United States could show. The second error is that intermarriag-es among descendants must be allowed for. Say that owing to these errors the result of the cal- culation is twenty thousand times too much, it would still result that every man of English- speaking race is descended from the Conqueror. Reduce it as much more as you like and the chances are yet strong that any given man of "tit ^ItK MRS. FLOYD. Granddaughter of Abraham Enloe. i65 your acquaintance, as well as yourself, is prob- ably a descendant of the victor of Hastings."' Apropos to this the distinguished Judge says, and truly : " The doctrine of heredity has some force in it, but much that is called heredity is simply the effect of environment." There is much of interest here in the study of the character of Abraham Lincoln, especially as viewed from the North Caro- lina tradition. The history of the Enloes, from its remotest period, illustrates the force of a wise selection, both as to heredity and environment. This is shown most clearly in the ease with which they have held their own in the race for Anglo-Saxon su- premacy. From the time of their coming to the Colonies from across the water until now, their history shows that they have occu- pied the same stable, reputable station in soci- ety — the best circle of the middle class ; the class that constitutes the salt of civilization, the saving-grace element of the race. i66 Three Enloe brothers, forebears of the fam- ily, landed about the middle of the seventeenth century, in Maryland. They came from Scot- land and England. One of these brothers settled on L^ord Baltimore's land, and reared a family. The other two went from Maryland to South Carolina and made their home in York district. These old Enloes were school-teachers by profession — men of liberal education. From these three men have sprung a numerous progeny, scattered over Maryland, South Caro- lina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, California and Texas. It is remarkable the number of strone men throughout this long line. We fearlessly invite any one who may feel skeptical as to this assertion to investigate for himself. All down the line from the day when the South Carolina grandsires began to "train the young idea to shoot," to the present when they sit in State legislatures, in Congress and upon 167 the bench, the Knloes have undoubtedly con- tributed materially to the building of the Re- public. They have marched in the forefront of frontier settlement, undaunted by the stern- est difficulties. They have introduced civil government in the wilderness, and modestly, yet liberally, contributed to the support of its institutions. They have helped make, con- strue and enforce the laws by which they have been governed. Wherever duty called, in peace or war, they have cheerfully responded. Wherever they have dwelt, they have dis- tinguished themselves for intelligence, indus- try and probity. Wherever they have planted themselves, thrifty farmers, successful mer- chants, physicians, jurists and legislators have sprung up. Physically they are rather large, tall, slen- der, but raw-boned as a rule, and sinewy. Men- tally they are vigorous and alert, and through- out the line, in an individual here and there, there is a vein of natural humor. One instance 1 68 I recall now : Matthew Enloe, deceased, son of Abraham Enloe, was not an educated man, owing to poor early advantages, but being pos- sessed of a fine, native intellect he enlivened the company with which he was thrown with a sparkling humor. We have been assured by those who knew him well that he was even more like Abraham Lincoln in personal ap- pearance than is his surviving brother Wes- ley. We confess, however, that this is hard to conceive after seeing only the latter. We shall here offer the interesting letters of three representatives of the Enloe family, re- siding respectively in North Carolina, Illinois and Missouri. These letters are the more in- teresting because the North Carolina represen- tative, as we are led to infer from the circum- stances, when he wrote knew nothing of the Illinois or Missouri Enloes, and when the Illi- nois and Missouri representatives wrote neither of them knew anything of the North Caro- lina Enloes. And what is still more interest-^ CAPT, WIIvUAM A. KNLOE. Orandsou of Abraham Enloe. 169 ing, in this place, is the proof which these letters afford of the general accuracy of tra- dition, together with the commendable pride and care with which the Enloes preserve their name and family identity : DiLLSBORO, N. C, January 28, 1899. Jas, H, Cathey, Esq., Sylva, N. C. My Dear Sir :— Your letter found me in the grasp of the grippe, but I shall be pleased to answer your questionos as best I can. My ancestors were of Scotch and English descent as far as I have been able to trace them. They came to this country (that is, direct) from England. IMy father's given name was Scroup. This name was always a mystery to me on account of its peculiarity. I could not account for it until I came across it in an old English history. I found in this history that there once lived in England a family whose surname was Scroup, and that they owned a large estate which de- scended under that name. 170 On finding this name in English history, and recalling that neither I nor any one else whom I had ever met in this country had ever heard of the name Scroup outside of my immediate family, I became quite convinced, the orig- inals having set sail from there, that my fam- ily on some side were of English stock. From the best information I have, there were three brothers of the original Enloes who came from the old country. They made their first stop in Maryland, where one of them staid and raised a family. One of them emigrated to York District, South Carolina. This was my great-grandfather. I think his name was Gilbert. My grandfather, Abraham Enloe, came over to Rutherford county. North Carolina, and married there a Miss Egerton. He after- ward moved just above the Indian Mission, then to Ocona lyufta, in Buncombe county, where he resided till his death. He raised nine sons and seven daughters. The other CAPT. \VM, A. ENLOE At at Earlier Age. 171 brother of my great-grandfather, and one ot the original three, went to Middle Tennessee and settled. He raised a considerable family. One of his descendants, B. A. Enloe, repre- sented the Eighth Tennessee district in Con- gress for several successive terms. Some of the Yorkville branch of the family moved to Georgia and elsewhere. Those in Georgia got to spelling their name *' Inlow," instead of Enloe. I visited the old gentle- man — the head of the Georgia branch. I found we were of the same stock. He told me that when he went to Georgia, people there were inclined to spell the name "In- low"; they kept it up; he did not file his ob- jection, and he finally found himself illus- trating the doctrine that custom eventually becomes law, and writing it himself the same way. Judge Enloe, who was assassinated at Elli- 3 ay, Georgia, by "bushwhackers," during the war, was this old gentleman's son. Hon. W. 172 Burder Ferguson, of Waynesville, N. C, read law under Judge Enloe. As to my grandfather Abraham Enloe's in- telligence, he was naturally of strong mind, and was well educated for a man of his time. He was a justice of the peace, an office of no little importance in pioneer days. He did the official writing for his neighborhood. Yours truly, William A. Enloe. Mulberry Grove, III., Sept. 16, 1895. fas. H. Cathey, Esq.^ Sylva^ N, C. Dear Sir:— Yours of the 14th inst. to hand, and I hasten to reply. I am unable to throw any light on the sub- ject of Lincoln's origin, further than looks — physical appearance. Abe Lincoln was a long, bony man, as are all the Enloes I have ever seen. As to his father being an Enloe, I know nothing. I will now give you, as near as I can, a brief history of my part of the Enloe family. My father's name was James ; his father's name was Ashael ; his father was Isaac En- loe, a Scotchman. Isaac Enloe was a Revo- hitionary patriot and soldier. There were two brothers of the old Scotch stock who set- tled in York county, South Carolina. My father and grandfather moved to Davidson county, Tenn., I think about the year 1808, where my grandfather Ashael taught school. (See history of Davidson county, Tenn.) About the year 181 6 they moved to Illinois, where we have remained ever since. As to myself, I served through the entire war, '61-5, in an Illinois regiment. I was not in North Carolina during the war, but had a brother who was with Sherman there. I was a First Lieutenant in the Gulf Depart- ment after Vicksburg, and I will say that al- though I fought the South for nearly four years, a*''d got mixed up with the Johnnies in many an unpleasant place (at least to me), I Avas never captured until years after Lee quit 174 at Appomattox. In 1871 I was taken in by a North Carolina gal. She waged a war on the aggressive, and came all the way to Illi- nois to get to capture me. Her father was in the Confederate army. I think this is as it should be — mix the people up and put an end to difference and distance. I will send you a letter I received some time ago from Dr. Isaac N. Bnloe, of Jefferson City, Missouri. Hope this may be of some service to you. Respectfully yours, Sam G. Bnloe. Jefferson City, Mo., May 5, 1894. Sam G. Enloe^ Mulberry Grove^ III. Dear Sir : — Your letter in regard to our family and relationship to hand. I am satis- fied we are of the same stock. From my oldest brother, James, who has heard my grandfather speak of his ancestors, I have the following : The first of the Bnloe J. FRANK ENI.OK. Son of Wesley and Grandson of Abe Enloe. 175 stock or family, consisting of two brothers named Isaac and Enoch, both school-teachers, settled in South Carolina. Previous to going to South Carolina they lived for a while, teaching, in Maryland. This was some time near the middle of the seventeenth century. Both originally came from Scotland. ]\Iy great-grandfather Enoch was the son of one of these Enloe brothers ; Isaac, I think. I have no positive information to that effect, but my . great-grandfather must have had brothers. Isaac and Enoch Enloe both married in South Carolina and raised large families. One of these families became quit: wealthy and remained in that State. IMembers of the other family, about the year 1808, moved to Tennessee. In 1808 my grandfather moved from South Carolina to Tennessee. My grandfather married a sister of his brother Isaac's wife. Isaac had three sons, Benjamin, James and Joel. Ben still lives iu Tennessee, and is the father of Benjamin A. Enloe, Con- 176 gressmati from the eighth Tennessee district. James and Joel are physicians, and reside in Nashville, Tenn. My grandfather, James Enloe, was born in York district. South Carolina, February 19th, 1793. He moved from there to Tennessee in 1808, and in 1828 he moved to Missouri. In Missouri he entered land and farmed, devoting no little time to horses and politics. He represented Cole county in the State Legisla- ture once, and Moniteau, after it was cut off from Cole, twice. My father Enoch was born in Barren county, Kentucky, in 1814, where my grand- father had moved temporarily. He came with grandfather to Missouri in 1828. My father married a Miss Murray. Of this union there were, in all, fourteen children. Eleven lived to be grown — seven sons and four daugh- ters. One of my brothers is a merchant, two of lis are physicians, and the others are farmers. Yours truly, Isaac N. Enloe. ^-11 In this letter of Dr. I. N. Enloe we have eliminated a great deal relating to his imme- diate family, of the Bnloes. We have meant simply to trace the name toward its original. There are, however, two things we have left out which we deem worthy of mention here — the frequent appearance of Abraham, showing that it was a common name in the Enloe family, and the certain indication that the Bnloes were superstitiously observant of the scriptural injunction, "to be fruitful and mul- tiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." It is only just to say that each of the fore- going letters is a courteous response to urgent and repeated solicitations. CHAPTER VII. WISDOM AND PROPHECY. From Mr. lyincoln's Inaugural Address of 4th March, 1861 :— My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliber- ately, that object will be frustrated by taking time ; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of your own fram- ing under it, while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for 179 precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken his favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- countrymen, and not in mine, is the momen- tous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn oath to " preserve, protect and defend it." I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Thoueh passion may have strained, it cannot break our bonds of affection. The mystic cord of mem- ory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth- stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched. i8o as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. From his famous letter to Horace Greeley : — As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing,'^ as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitu- tion. The sooner the national authority can be restored the nearer the Union will be — the Union as it was. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it — if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it — if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the Union. i8i From his message of March 6, 1S62:— I recommend the adoption of a resolution by your honorable body, which shall be sub- stantially as follows : Resolved, That the United States, in order to co-operate with any State which may adopt o-radual abolition of slavery, give to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate it for the inconve- nience, public and private, produced by such change of system. On the 14th August, 1862, he received a deputation of colored men, with whom he held an interview on the subject of colonization, in which he, among other thuigs, said: — It now becomes my duty, as it has long been my inclination, to favor the colonization of the people of African descent residing in the United States. Why should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? This, perhaps, is the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have l82 between us a^btoader difference tlian exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss ; but this physical difference is a great disadvan- tage to us both, as I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated. You, here, are freemen, I suppose. Per- haps you have long been free, or all your lives. Your race are suffering, in my judg- ment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the white race enjoys. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a i83 single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. I do not propose to discuss this, but I treat it as a fact with which we have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would. It is the fact about which we all think and feel alike, I and you. We look to our condition. Owing to the exist- ence of two races on this continent, I need not recount to you the effects upon white men growing out of the institution of slavery. I believe in its general evil effects on the white race. See our present condition — the country engaged in a war ! our white men cutting one- another's throats ; none knowing how far it will extend, and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one w^ay or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institu- tion of slavery, and the colored race as a basis, 1 84 i the war could not have an existence. It is better for us both, therefore, that we be sepa- rated. His speech on the occasion of the dedication of the battle-field of Gettysburg : — Four score and seven years ago our fath- ers brought forth on this continent a new na- tion, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, test- ing whether that nation so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a por- tion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note i85 nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is, rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these hon- ored dead we takejncreased devotion for which they gave the last full measure of devotion;, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom ^ and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Note: — For the foregoing extracts, except the Gettys- burg address, the author is under obligation to Raymond's Life of Lincoln. CHAPTER VIII. ADDENDA. PART I. author's introduction. Since the making of this little book inter- est has steadily increased in'*the subject of the paternal origin of Abraham Ivincoln, and the public faith has as steadily waxed in the theory upheld by this narrative. The book has passed through two editions ; the last is now exhausted and the third, containing addi- tional, vital evidence, is this you hold in your hand. Every statement of fact in this volume is the solemn statement of persons — intelligent admirers of Mr. I^incoln — the equal of the most conservative, trustworthy and patriotic in the country. The first two editions have circulated in every State in the Union ; have gone to Can- ada, Mexico, England, Scotland and India. i87 The author has received letters by the hundred from representative citizens mani- festing much interest in the facts thus made public for the first time. Not a few of these letters are from gentlemen familiar with the time and men contemporaneous with Mr. Lincoln, some of whom knew Mr. Lincoln personall}^ Distinguished scholars, divines, statesmen and publicists of all sections have evinced previous knowledge of the existence of a foundation for this record, and attach un- mistakable credence thereto. Truth is, historic record and the public voice this narrative has elicited, unite in show- ing that the public have been incredulous of the chapter on the paternal origin of Abraham Lincoln as written by his popular biographers. No biography is complete, no biography is faithful that has not an open, ringing an- nouncement of the parentage of the subject. Mr. Lincoln's biographers may be divided into two groups touching his parentage : The first, those about whom the light had shone and whose sense of honor and profes- sional responsibility forbade their passing i88 unnoted the fact that light revealed ; and the second, those who knew nor cared, more than to apotheosize their subject. Less than four of Mr. Lincoln's hundreds of biographers make up the first class. Neither class has produced an authentic biography. The first are the victim of a reckless credulity and unnatural public sentiment ; the second have not the full courage of their conviction. Messrs. John Locke Scripps, William H. Herndon and Ward H. Lamon are the first class. Mr. Scripps was Mr. Lincoln's first biog- rapher and obtained his information from Mr. Lincoln's own lips. Mr. Herndon was Mr. Lincoln's law-partner and intimate personal friend of more than a quarter of a century. Mr. Lamon, in addi- tion to the benefit of Mr. Lincoln's personal acquaintance, had unrestricted use of the original manuscript of Mr. Herndon. These three enjoyed peculiar advantages for writing an authentic personal biography of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Scripps wrote at a time when his esti- mate must, necessarily, have been shallow and incomplete. Mr. Herndon enjoyed a much wider and calmer perspective. Mr. Lamon came into possession of fruits of the labors of both, added to his own research, verification and contemplation. But neither of these has shown himself an ideal biographer of Abra- ham Lincoln. They have evinced fatal lack of industry, courage and candor. Abraham Lincoln was, in the last analysis, the soul of these virtues. If the life of any man in hu- man annals is entitled to fidelic record it is that of Abraham Lincoln. His distinguish- ing mark was the fidelity his character bore to" the mother that brought him forth— his life-likeness to the old Earth. In simple naturalness, unadulterated plain- ness he stands alone, not quite approached by any other great man of history. Even his physical form was so plain that it verged upon the grotesque. The movement of his body and action of his mind were ordered by the laws of simplicity, freedom and truth. No human dogma, however universal, could have influenced him against his conviction any 190 more than it could have influenced the cur- rents of the wind or the sea. His soul was the remorseless hater of sham and counterfeit and error, and that which maketh a lie in any and every guise. There is not another such composition in ancient or modern annals. There is no other so profound a study. Withal, to the patient and faithful and courageous he is possible of solution. Once the correct vantage-ground is reached there is serene and satisfying con- templation. Nowhere is there promise of larger reward for diligent investigation. The unknowable in him is a small and unimpor- tant moiety. Hitherto the world has been unable to ac- count for Abraham Lincoln's being, reason- ing from orthodox, human hypotheses. His origin and antecedents may be known. His advent into the world was not miraculous. He never claimed supernatural origin. He came into the world, primarily, as all other human beings come. If he were the child of a special providence, so be it. He was the child of natural parents. True he was the 191 hero of a crisis. Like the Conqueror, and Cromwell, and Luther, and Wesley, the creator of an era — the cohesive spirit of a world-movement. But, after all, he was no more divine or inspired than they. He was intensely human with a superlatively fine moral fiber — fine as that of Washington ; ru- dimentarily as fine as that of Robert Edward Lee — two of the climaxes of human perfec- tion in sixty centuries. Events of his remarkable career bear wit- ness to his sustained fidelity to the loftier human instincts — instincts inherent and schooled in the university of nature — nature in her best estates. Nature was always jeal- ous of Abraham Lincoln. He acknowledged no master and but one mistress — Nature. In boyhood he played the innocent pranks and dreamt the roseate dreams of that happy es- tate ; in manhood to the tragic end he played with nature's master hand upon the harp of the souls of men. An upright appreciation of these primal elements of Abraham Lin- coln's character, as well as a due regard for the rights of posterity should prompt his biog- 192 rapher to adopt as his criterion the well known rule of Ciceio : "Neither dare to say anything that is false or fear to say anything that is true, nor give any just suspicion of favor or disaffection.'^ • A fit biographer of Abraham Lincoln shall be the man of rugged honesty and patient intrepidity — a Boswell in detail, a Carlyle in faith, even if '• Boswell must be paid for showing his bear," and if Carlyle must moil for "seventeen years in the valley of the shadow of Frederick." Time may not yet be full for a just bio- graphical portraiture of Abraham Lincoln. But there is no danger in asserting that hith- erto his biographers have been provincial in concept and partizan in expression. The work of Mr. Wm. H. Herndon ap- proaches most nearly the exception. The first (in point of time) biographies of Mr. Lincoln are necessarily shallow and inac- curate. These were written in haste from motives of personal and party interest. The saner judgment of his biographer of more recent years has been eclipsed by the 193 nearness of the marvelous events of his offi- cial career, the niag-nitude of the results of the crisis in which Providence ordained him the principal factor, and his own strange, gigantic, fascinating personality. In short, four things have combined to pre- vent the real life of Abraham I^incoln : blind hero-worship ; aristocratic sentiment ; false modesty and aversion to laborious research — four things Abraham Lincoln trampled under his feet as an elephant would trample the mire of the jungle. Little wonder Abraham , Lincoln's origin has been the subject of imagination and con- jecture. In childhood and youth his place of abode a squalid camp in a hovv^ling wilder- ness ; his meal an ashen crust ; his bed a pile of leaves; his nominal guardian a shiftless and worthless wanderer ; his intimate associates and putative relatives a gross, illiterate and superstitious rabble. Little wonder that in some quarters Abra- ham Lincoln's fame has bordered upon deifi- cation. His all but miraculous burst from the wilderness into the nation's eye ; his he- 194 roic and glorious life-achievement ; his sudden passing at the assassin's hand, these, with the element of sadness which was the inseparable genius of his nature and culminating incident of his fortune, are the elements needful to magnify the subject beyond human propor- tion. Abraham I^incoln passed from the mountain top of earthly greatness into the vast unknown in a halo of heroism, mysti- cism and sorrow ; and doubtless he shall con- tinue for all time to come to draw from all mankind admiration, wonder and tears. In the glamor of this mingled mist and glare the huge proportion of one of the greatest and most human of men has been despoiled by the rude hand of the ignorant enthusiast. The great, refreshing spectacle has been bun- gled. The pity of it! As a result of the operation of these abnormal influences the entire life of Abraham Lincoln has suffered, but no chapter like that on his origin. Here was something out of the ordinary — some- thing unseen; but instead of allowing the light to shine into this grotto in a great life, fanatic biographers and other sinister and 195 designing persons, have endeavored to mag- nify and involve the mystery for purposes of heathen worship, or have sought to come into possession of it that they might destroy it. The paternal origin of Abraham Lincoln : this is the secret. Light, once deflected here and an hundred other nooks and corners in liis personality, will light up and become plain and comprehensible. To evade or conceal a cardinal fact relative to Abraham Lincoln is not only a moral wrong, but a reflection upon his character and a violation of his memory. The nature of his origin is primarily indispensable to an intelligent, not to say full, conception of his character. The correct source of his origin is, practically, universally accepted as a mat- ter of doubt — an unsettled question — an un- known quantity — in his life. If no trust- worthy means were in existence or accessible for the removal of the doubt, for the settle- ment of the question, moral responsibility would not obtain and the mystery wcjuld con- tinue. But, fortunately for posterity, there is in existence and available all the means neces- 196 sary to a* final, correct and satisfactory solu- tion. Using the approved methods of the historian in collecting data, there is not a fact in the first twenty years of the life of Abra- ham Lincoln easier of establishment than that of his real paternal origin. There could be but three ways of account- ing for the being of Abraham Lincoln or any other man : First, that he was of natural legit- imate origin; second, that he was of natural illegitimate origin ; and third, that he was of miraculous origin. The first hypothesis has been taken for granted as true and passed without further thought by the casual layman and biographical novice. The second hy- pothesis or theory has been affirmed by tradi- tion so well defined, closely connected and emphatic that the element of myth is entirely absent ; by the two most intimate and dis- tinguished personal biographers of Mr. Lin- coln after the most laborious, exhaustive and conscientious research ; and by an extensive, intelligent and authentic public consensus. The third hypothesis has been zvhispered by the few, and voiced by at least one reputable 197 eulogist who said that ^''Abraha)n Lmcoht 7vas zvithoiit ancestors^ fellows or successors?^ It is barely possible that some of Mr. Watterson's contemporaries should construe him literally, and that mankind generally a thousand years Iience would do so, it is more than probable. Granted that the third hypothesis is unrea- sonable, the settlement of the question turns upon the weight of evidence between the first and second. It is the office of these pages to submit tes- timony in support of the second theory — that Abraham Lincoln was of illegitimate origin, his father being Abraham Enloe, and not Thomas Lincoln or any one else. In addition to the sound, sustained and perennial tradition of North Carolina, the author submits in this addenda extrinsic his- torical data and other cumulative evidence. Before giving to the public the record of the paternity of Abraham Lincoln in the present enlarged form, we desire to say that the data bearing upon the subject is cumu- lative, and promises to continue to be for an 198 indefinite time. There is other material now in sight, but inaccessible for the present, or at all, without the expenditure of much time and no little money. This enlarged edition is the result of the acquisition of several years, and, when time and opportunity permits, facts that may come to light that are worth while, will be included in a subsequent edition. Now that this in- vestigation has been begun it is our duty to accept, preserve and publish all the material, trustworthy facts bearing upon the subject. Two things, we contend, our research have disclosed beyond question : First, that Abra- ham Lincoln was illegitimate, and second, that his father was an Abraham Enloe, Another thing is clear as a result of our research : That there has been a determined and systematic effort on the part of at least two of Mr. Lincoln's most intimate personal biographers to discover the truth of his pater- nal origin and publish the same to the world — these biographers were William H. Hern- don, his law partner, and Ward H. Lamon. Again, there is another fact that is, as a 199 result of this investigation, equally as certain : That there has been a determined and sys- tematic war of suppression and destruction against the publication and dissemination of the truth of Mr. Lincoln's real paternal ori- gin by certain individuals. It was the original purpose of Mr. Wm. H. Herndon to write a rigidly truthful narrative of the life of Abraham Lincoln. How much this purpose was influenced or prevented is a matter that is familiar to persons now living. Mr. Jessie W. Weik, of Greencastle, In- diana, toward the last in the preparation of his biography, became a collaborator with Mr. Herndon. In 1865 Mr. Herndon visited the scenes of Mr. Lincoln's birth and early years in Kentucky, as did Mr. Weik, later. These personal visits to Kentucky were made with a view to ascertaining the truth pertaining to these early periods in the life of their hero. Mr. Herndon says that ''Mr. Weik spent considerable time investigating the truth of a report current in Bourbon county, Kentucky, that Thomas Lincoln from one Abraham Inlow, a miller there, assumed 200 the paternity of the infant child of a poor girl named Nancy Hanks, and after marriage, moved with her to Washington or Hardin connty, where the son, who was named Abra- ham, after his real, and Lincoln after his putative father, was born." Mr. Herndon does not say that Mr. Weik after investiga- tion, found the report to be untrue, but, in- stead, goes on at considerable length to substantiate the report. See suppressed matter following. This much may be found in the suppressed three-volume edition of Lincoln by Messrs. Herndon and Weik. The question then re- curs upon the fact as to whether there was an elaborate investigation of the illegitimate paternity of Mr. Lincoln, and if so, did they write down in their manuscript for posterity, the complete account of their findings. The facts are that Mr. Weik, because of influences brought to bear upon him, receded from his original position of independent recorder of truth and fact and destroyed the original manuscript. Mr. Lamon bought from Mr. Herndon the 20I use of his original manuscript, paying him three thousand dollars therefor. But Mr. Weik and those associated with him in their campaign of destruction, were careful to make way with every volume of Lamon they could lay hand on. Through Weik's influence other valuable evidence gathered by Mr. Herndon at great expense was destroyed. It will be noted that the facts touching Abraham Lincoln's illegitimate origin as first recorded by his intimate friend and law part- ner between whom and Mr. Lincoln, as Mr. Horace White assures us, there was never an unkind word or thought, are three editions removed from Mr. Herndon's original manu- script. The Lamon biography which we count as one edition, it having within its covers the original Herndon manuscript, the three-volume Life by Messrs. Herndon and Weik, and the two-volume edition by Messrs. Herndon and Weik. It is evident that the three-volume edition was suppressed because of the statements with regard to Mr. Lincoln's illegitimate paternity, 202 for the reason that these are the identical statements expurgated in the last or two- volume edition of Herndon and Weik. It is establishable that the collaborator of Mr. Herndon, who was the collector of this illegitimate-paternity data, was also the chief agent in the destruction of it. It is even more remarkable that the current expurga- ted edition in two volumes contains numerous hints of illegitimate paternity but in very subdued form. These facts evidently show that the origi- nal findings of William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, upon the question of Abra- ham Lincoln's paternity, were indubitable. This being admitted the facts which were published in meager or subdued form would indicate the facts which were written or pub- lished in complete or elaborate form. And more, is it reasonable that two reputa- ble citizens, cultured and refined gentlemen, the one the law-partner and life-long, intimate friend, and the other an ardent admirer, of a man among the greatest and most illustrious of the time, would, as his personal biogra- 203 phers, write down for the gaze of posterity a rumor, a. report affecting so personal and vital a snbject as that of his origin, and that, too^ in defiance of the well-known canons of society? In view of these facts the conclusion is in- evitable, leaving the North Carolina tradition entirely out of the question, that Abraham Lincoln was the son of an Abraham Enloe by Nancy Hanks. We shall not discuss the question of Mr. Lincoln's illegitimate paternity from the La- mon biography point of view further than to invite the reader's careful attention to the entire quotation on the subject, and particu- larly to the allusions to the relations existing between Thomas Lincoln and Abraham En- loe or Inlow, the name being spelled differ- ently in different localities. Mr. Lamon's opening paragraphs are sig- nificant. He says almost emphatically that Lincoln was of illegitimate paternity. He wrote in the major part from Mr. Herndon's manuscript, and it is evident that he kjtew that Abraham Lincoln was an illegitimate. 204 Subsequent references to the "Inlows," and to " Abraham Inlow," afford strong reason for the inference that he knew to a certainty the fact he had obliquely though unmistaka- bly stated at the outset. It were far better had Messrs. Herndon and Weik and Mr. Lamon written and published the plain, blunt facts. By recording a rumor, a vague report, these biographers lowered, vulgarized and jeopardized their office. If, as it is our opinion based upon thorough in- vestigation, these biographers wrote down the true facts about Mr. Lincoln's origin, and these facts were afterward modified and ac- commodated by others to the end that they might be shadowed with doubt, and ulti- mately ignored by the student of Abraham Lincoln, the perpetrators misjudged mankind and threw a challenge in the teeth of the very incident they were designing to intercept. Somewhere in the deep of the heart of man- kind there is a chamber sacred to the love of truth. The tallest and whitest heroes of his- tory are the martyrs to the cause of truth. 205 The most universally popular of the works of literature is the book of truth. Had the Bible depicted only the fair, the favored and the far-famed side of its charac- ters—its priests and prophets, its heroes and poets, its rulers and its peoples— it had long ago been torn into ten thousand times its number of apparent inconsistencies, and scat- tered to the four winds of heaven. Then indeed would a Voltaire or an Ingersoll have had a pic-nic. But it deals with every one of its characters, save Christ the Lord, as a hu- man, and records the truth and the whole truth about each. This is the secret, from the human side, of the solidity and force of the book, this is one quality which led Mr. Gladstone to characterize it as "The impreg- nable rock of the Holy Scriptures." If it were anything short of one connected tissue of truth, pleasant and unpleasant, it had not merited the striking metaphor. So long as men are treated as human there is no reason for the distortion, misrepresenta- tion or suppression of the facts relating to their lives. In an enlightened country, such 2o6 as ours, to deify any man, however great, will prove quite a difficult if not a hazardous un- dertaking. Our age is an age of faith based upon sight, truth and practicality. Candor and honesty are more attractive than mist and falsehood. It is an age when the people demand to know all the material facts bearing upon the lives of their leading spirits. Much that a man is is accountable for in his origin. A man is in nowise responsible for his origin. A knowledge of a man's origin is indispensable to a full and correct insight into his character. The nature of a man's origin can not in any- wise affect his reputation. Good name is adduced from the acts, the deeds, the life of the man and not from his antecedents. False canons may smother and stultify important truths in the life of a hero, but they can not destroy them. The world is determined that its great shall not be hidden from it. It is eager to gaze upon them in the light of noon- day. The world loves to look at the thing as it is, and, in its final judgment, it is just. It has its homage for strength and perfection, 207 and its charity for weakness and imperfection ; its emnlation for virtne and contempt for vice. The world has unfading faith in the ability of the good name and fame of Abraham Lin- coln to take care of themselves. It don't want any Lincoln apocrypha, nor Lincoln apotheo- sization. It simply wants " Honest Abe" from the cradle to the grave, and it wants every im- portant truth and fact and incident bearing upon his character, antecedent and succeed- ent to his advent in the world, nicely, artless- ly, justly. But to recur to the subject under consideration : It is very remarkable that the biographies of Messrs. Herndon and Weik, and of Mr. La- mon, written a couple of decades before this tradition, should have taken note of the iden- tical facts herein recorded, namely, that Mr. Lincoln was illegitimate and that Abraham Enloe was his father. At the time of the writing of their biographies nor at any time subsequent, so far as is known, did Messrs. Herndon and Weik and Mr. Lamon know any- thing of the North Carolina tradition. Not one of the witnesses for the North Carolina 2o8 tradition, at the time the testimony was taken, had ever seen a copy of either edition of these biographies or knew aught of their contents. Another and remarkable thing is that the two leading facts of the North Carolina tradition went from Kentucky to Missouri as early as 1828. The Enloes, Leslies, Simpsons, Shorts and Van Pools of Kentucky and Missouri, of 1 824-1 835, were familiar with the facts. Everywhere the gossip was the same, that Abraham Lincoln was the son of Abraham Knloe — in New York, Missouri, Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina. Kentucky — and long before a biography of Mr. Lincoln was dreamed of — before the war and during the war and after the war. It is remarkable that the only ante-bellum biographer of Mr. Lincoln, the only biographer who is accredited with having got his data from Mr. Lincoln's own lips, and who enjoyed the honor of having his proofs read by Mr. Lincoln, obtained from Mr. Lincoln a secret about his ancestry which he (Lincoln) did not wish published then^ and which he (^the biog- 309 rapher Mr. John Loake Scripps) died without revealing to any one. It is remarkable that Mr. Lincoln should disclose the fact that "his mother was the illegitimate daughter of lyucy Hanks and a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter," enter- ing upon an illumined discussion of hereditary traits as between legitimate and illegitimate offspring, and then suddenly draw around him- self a barrier of sombre silence, Mr. Herndon was afraid to penetrate. Was it the disclos- ure he had made as to his mother's illegiti- macy, or the next step in the process of dis- closure — his ozvn illegitimacy, at which he lapsed? Abraham Lincoln always lapsed into reticence at this point in his discourse where, to his mind, to have continued would have impaired his personal, or the public, final in- terest. At the time at which he was talking with Mr. Herndon, nor at the time he divulged the secret to Mr. Scripps was it expedient, to his mind, to make this latter matter of public disclosure. It was something he did not wish ^' published then " and relating to his ancestry. It is remarkable that there could never be 2IO found official record of the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks ; that ther-e should have been no affection between Thomas Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln his reputed son ; that the former should have treated the latter with great and habitual cruelty ; that there should; have been a sister older than Abraham but no vestige of proof that he even recognized her while she lived, or referred to her after her death — an only sister. It is remarkable that this sister's name is subject for difference be- tween biographers — some, able and well in- formed, contending that her name was Nancy, and others equally able and well informed, affirming that her name was Sarah. It is re- markable that there should have been any variance of information among Lincoln biog- raphers as to the given came of the father ci Thomas Lincoln. It is still more remarkable that the variance is between one biographer,, a down-easter, Dr. Holland, on the one side, and Thomas Lincoln's own family and life- time associates, on the other. Dr. Holland contending, without verification that Thomas Lincoln's father's name was Abraham ; and. 211 Oil the other hand, the Haiikses — John and iDennis (Dennis here being disinterested) , and 'Col. Chapman, who married Thomas Lincoln's stepdaughter, submitting that his name was Mordecai, and that this Mordecai, Thomas Lincoln's father, had four brothers — John, Jacob, Isaac and Thomas. It is remarkable that, according to the tes- timony of the family there was not a single member named Abraham prior to the advent of the President, and that Dr. Holland should have discovered the given name of the grand- sire to be the same as that of the President. It is remarkable that Abraham has been a common name among the Enloes for a hun- dred years. Indeed it is remarkable opposite this tradition that the child was christened Abraham. It is remarkable that the Bible record of births and deaths which purports to be in the handwriting of the President devotes so much space to the Johnsons, who were of no blood relation, and so little to his mother, reputed : sister, reputed father and the Hankses and Lincolns, who should have been bound to 212 him by the most sacred ties of blood andJ memory. Finally, it is remarkable, if the tradition that Abraham Enloe was the father of Abra- ham Lincoln be a fabrication and a fraud, that certain influences of standing and power should have sought with so much diligence and persistency to run it to earth and break or destroy it. Over against the subject of these pages all these facts are very pre-en- gaging and remarkable. In connection with this tradition we deem; the history of the Enloe family of much im- portance. It has, however, for obvious rea- sons, been our first and foremost object to strengthen and perfect the lines of the main fact of this book. But, fortunately, in so doing we have come into possession of quite an interesting and extended account of cer- tain branches of the Enloe family resident in States other than North Carolina. For the majority of this data we are directly indebted to Dr. I. N. Enloe of Jefferson City, Mis- souri. 213 It is evident from this and other record that the family is of Scotch origin, — that the originals came from Scotland is borne out by all the testimony. It is also evident there are two brothers — first settlers — accounted for by informed mem- bers of the family residing in different States and unacquainted with each other. These two brothers stopped in York District, South Carolina. They were school teachers by pro- fession. Their names were Isaac and Enoch. It is further evident that all the Enloes known to this narrative sprang from these two forbears, and that Gilbert Enloe was the son of Isaac. Gilbert Enloe, therefore, could not have been the father of Abraham Enloe, the father of Abraham Lincoln. James Enloe, of Missouri, a descendant of Enoch, states it as his opinion that Wesley and the other Enloes, of North Carolina, were mistaken as to Gilbert's having been the father of Abraham ; and Rev. Asahel Enloe, the son of Gilbert, says that his father was the son of Isaac; that he knew Abraham Enloe and that his father called him "Cousin Abram." 214 There are no more intelligent people in North Carolina than the Enloes — Abraham's descendants ; they are among the State's fore- most citizens, but, like thousands of others, a busy life with someone of its manifold unavoid- able circumstances, has prevented their pre- serving the lines of descent. Thorough investigation, when we have time, we are confident will disclose the fact that Abraham, the father of Lincoln, was the son of Enoch Bnloe, of York District, South Carolina, unless there were three instead of two original brothers who settled there, and Abraham was the son of the unknown one.' The weight of evidence, however, is in favor of the theory that only two Scotsmen — Isaac and Enoch — settled in York District. All the North Carolina testimony being the same, that Abraham Enloe came to this State from Y^ork District, he must have been the son of one of these old school teachers. The En- loes — sturdy Scotsmen — are one family, rep- resentative, self-sustaining, self-respecting, pa- triotic, intelligent, progressive, of the best American citizenship, and worthy of Abra- ham Lincoln or any other man. 215 Through the gracious agency of Mr. John B. Burton, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a Lin- coln specialist, and by the generous courtesy of IMr. Levin C. Handy, we have obtained the following : "Washington, D. C, Nov. 26, 1903. Mr. John E. Burton : You are authorized to use in print, in a book now being published by James H. Cathey, any picture of Abraham Lincoln standing, sitting or otherwise, as shown by any nega- tive from which prints are made by me. Levin C. Handy, Nephew and Successor of M. B. Brady, 449 Maryland Ave., S. W., Washington, D. C." The charming sitting picture of Mr. Lincoln was made by Mr. Brady for his private collec- tion, and Mr. Lincoln sat just to suit the artist. His nephew had never copied it until he did so for Mr. Burton . Mr. Brady made two proofs of this rare picture, and then by a mis- fortune dropped the plate and broke it into 2l6 forty pieces. Mr. Brady's nephew has been offered $100.00 for the other proof. Mr. Brady's nephew gave a rough print of it for public exhibition in the Presbyterian celebration of the 150th anniversary of that church recently held at Washington. The full length, standing likeness of Mr. Lincoln is from the actual, original, glass negative of Mr. Brady. Mr. Brady took practically all the Lincoln and other official photographs from i860 to 1895-8. His nephew, Mr. Handy, is the only heir to all, and sold many of them in a lump to the United States government for $25,000. We, therefore, congratulate the public, through the generosity of Mr. Handy, by way of the good- ness of Mr. Burton, upon its great fortune in being permitted to admire these unique speci- mens of the accomplished artist upon the homely, handsome face and form of Abraham Lincoln, and we trust the student of this tra- dition will not neglect the physical compari- son thereby facilitated. James H. Cathey. Sylva, N. C. 217 PART II.— TRUTH RECOVERED FROM SUPPRESSED HISTORIC RECORD. After three years of diligent search the author has come into the temporary possession and use of the suppressed edition of the Life of Abraham Lincohi by William H. Herndon. It is hardly necessary to state that Mr. Hern- don, now deceased, was a citizen of Spring- field, Illinois, and the intimate, personal friend and law-partner of Mr. Lincoln, and that the partnership which extended over near a quarter of a century, was dissolved by the untimely death of the latter. The suppressed edition consists of three volumes of six hundred and thirty-eight pages, bound in dark blue cloth, with the fac- simile autograph of Mr. Liucoln imprinted in gold upon the back, and the face of Mr. Lin- coln, also in gold, upon the backbone of the book. The edition is abundantly illustrated. It is published by Messrs. Belford, Clark & Co. Mr. Jesse W. Weik was a collaborator upon these volumes and his name so appears in the 2l8 book. The edition is now rare to the ragged edge of extinction — a set selling for from fifteen to twenty-five dollars. The edition was suppressed because of some paragraphs therein that were objectionable to certain individuals. These paragraphs are known by a comparison of the original or suppressed edition and the new or current edition, consisting of two volumes bound in green cloth, embracing six hundred and seven- ty-nine pages, including a lengthy intro- duction by Mr. Horace White, and published by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. A comparative examination of the two edi- tions will show the matter appearing in the old or suppressed, and expurgated in the new or current edition, as follows : Volume i, pages 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 — "His (Lincoln's) theory in discussing the matter of hereditary traits had been, that, for certain reasons, ille- gitimate children are oftentimes sturdier and brighter than those born in lawful wedlock ; and in his case, he believed that his better nature and finer qualities came from this broad- minded, unknown Virginian. The relation — 219 painful as it was — called up the recollection of his mother, and as the buggy jolted over the road (Mr. Herndon and Mr. Lincoln were on their way to court), he added : ' God bless my mother ; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her' ; and immediately lapsed into si- lence. Our interchange of ideas ceased, and we rode on for some time without exchanging a word. He w^as sad and absorbed. Burying himself in thought and musing, no doubt^ over the disclosure he had made, he drew round him a barrier which I feared to pene- trate. His words and melancholy tone made a deep impression on me. It was an experience I can never forget. As we neared the town of Petersburg we were overtaken by an old man, who rode beside us for awhile and entertained us wdth reminis- cences of days on the frontier. Lincoln was reminded of several Indiana stories, and by the time we had reached the unpretentious court house at our destination, his sadness had passed away. After Mr. Lincoln had obtained some prominence in the world, persons who knew 220 l)oth himself and his father were constantly pointing to the want of resemblance between the two. The old gentleman was not only deprived of energy and shiftless, and becanse of these persons were unable to account for the source of his son's ambition and intellect- ual superiority over other men. Hence the charge so often made in Kentucky that Mr. I^incoln was in reality the offspring of a Har- din or a Marshall, or that he had in his veins the blood of some of the noted families who held social and intellectual sway in the west- ern part of the State. These serious hints were the outgrowth of the campaign of i860, which was conducted with such unrelenting prejudice in Kentucky that in the county where lyincoln was born only six persons could be found who had the courage to vote for him. I remember that after his nomina- tion for the Presidency, I^incoln received from Kentucky many enquiries about his family and origin. This curiosity on the part of the people for one who had attained such promi- nence was perfectly natural, but it never pleasedjhim in the least ; in fact to one man 221 who was endeavoring to establish a relation- ship through the Hanks family he simply answered : ' You are mistaken about my mother,' without explaining the mistake or making further mention of the matter. Samuel Haycroft, the clerk of the court in Hardin county, invited him to visit the scenes of his birth and boyhood, which led him to say in a letter, June 4, i860 : ' You suggest that a visit to the place of my nativity might be pleasant to me. Indeed it would, but would it be safe ? Would not the people lynch me ?' That reports reflecting on his origin and descent should arise in a community in which he felt that his life was unsafe was by no means surprising. Regarding the paternity of Lincoln a great many surmises and a still larger amount of unwritten or, at least, unpublished, history have drifted into the currents of western lore and journalism. A number of such traditions are extant in Kentucky and other localities. Mr. Weik has spent considerable time investigating the 222 truth of a report current in Bourbon county,, Kentucky, that Thomas Lincoln^ for a consid- eration jrom one Abraham Inlow^ a miller there ^ assumed the paternity of the infant child of a poor girl itamed Nancy Hanks ; and after marriage removed with her to Washing- ton or Hardin county^ zvhere the son^ zvho was named Abraham^ after his real^ and Lincoln after his putative father^ was born. A prominent citizen of the town of Mount Sterling, in that State, who was at one time judge of the court and subsequently editor of a newspaper, and who was descended from the Abraham Inlow mentioned, has written a long argument in support of his alleged kinship through this source to Mr. Lincoln. He emphasizes the striking similarity in stature, facial features, and length of arms, notwithstanding the well-established fact that the first-born child of the real Nancy Hanks was not a boy, but a girl ; and that the mar- riage did not take place in Bourbon, but in Washington county." * * ^ Next to the biography of Mr. Lincoln by WESLKY M. BNLOE, Age 8i. 223 his law-partner above quoted from, for open method and frank and fearless statement, ranks the life of Mr. Lincoln by Ward H. Lamon. This work consists of one volume, in octavo form, and contains on extra large paper 547 pages, beside 14 pages of introduc- tory matter, and was published by Messrs. James R. Osgood & Co., of Boston. Mr. Lamon was the man who spirited Mr. Lincoln to his post at Washington when it was thought his life was sought. Personal fitness and circumstances familiar to the informed student of Abraham Lincoln Tendered Mr. Lamon peculiarly competent to write the truthful life of Mr. Lincoln. In ad- dition to his own rare materials he purchased for three thousand dollars the use of the orig- inal manuscript of Mr. Herndon. He labored against the hardship of having an unnatural public taboo his book. His book was vigor- ously attacked, but in the attack attention was called to the fact that Lincoln's biography, summed up, published to the world that " Abraham Lincoln was of illegitimate origin and lived and died an infidel." 224 This statement aroused inquiry ; people be- gan to search for old copies of Lamon's Lincoln until, at this writing, it is in such demand that a copy sells for from four dollars and fifty cents to twelve dollars at public auc- tion. This book was also suppressed. Apropos to the narrative of these pages I quote from this suppressed edition of Lamon's Life of Lincoln as follows : "His father's name was Thomas Lincoln and his mother's maiden name was Nancy Hanks. At the time of his birth they are supposed to have been married aboiU three years. Although there appears to have been little synnpathy or affection between Thomas and Abraham Lincoln, they were nevertheless con- nected by ties and associations which make the 'previous history of Thomas Lincoln and his family a necessary part of any reasonably fnll biography of the great man who immortalised the name by wearing it." Further : " Dr. Holland says that the father of Thomas Lincoln was named Abraham, but 225 gives 110 aiitliorit}' for his statement, and is as likely to be wrong as to be right. The Hankses, Dennis and John, who passed a great part of their lives in the company of Thomas Lincoln, tell us that the name of the father of Thomas Lincoln was Mordecai, and so also does Col. Chapman, w^ho married Thomas Lincoln's step-daughter. Dr. Holland says, also, that the father of Thomas Lincoln had four brothers, John, Jacob, Isaac and Thomas." Further: "Thomas Lincoln (Abraham's father) was comparatively short and stout, standing about five feet ten inches in his shoes. His hair dark, face round and full, complexion brown. He was a vagrant ; in politics a Democrat ; in religion nothing and everything — a Free Will Baptist in Kentucky, a Presbyterian in Indiana and a Campbellite in Illinois. He was variously called Lincoln, Linckhern and Linckhorn. He was married sometime in 1806 to Nancy Hanks. It is true that Nancy did not live with her uncle. It is admitted by all the old residents of the place that they were honestly married, but precisely when or ivliere no one can tell, Dil- 226 igent and thorough researches by the most competent persons have failed to discover any trace of the fact in the records of Hardin and adjoining counties. The license and the minister's return in the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Sarah Johnson^ his second wife^ were easily found in the place where the law required them to be, but of Nancy Hanks' marriage there, exists no evidence but that of mutual acknoivledgrnent and cohabitation,^^ Again : " It is not likely that Tom Lincoln cared a straw about his (Abraham's) educa- tion. He had none himself and is said to have admired muscle more than mind. Never- theless, as Abraham's sister was going to school for a few days at a time, he was sent along, as Dennis Hanks remarks, more to bear her company than with any expectation or DESIRE that he would learn much himself.''^ Again : " Being a wanderer by nature he (Thomas Lincoln) began to long for a change. His decision, however, was hastened by cer- tain troubles between him and one Abraham Enlow. These troubles culminated in a des- perate combat between the two men. They 227 fought like savages; but Lincoln obtained a signal and permanent advantage by biting ofl the nose of his antagonist, so that he went bereft all the days of his life, and published his audacity and its punishment wherever he showed his face. But the affray, and the fame of it, made Lincoln more anxious than ever to escape from Kentucky. He resolved, there- fore, to leave these scenes forever, and seek a roof-tree beyond the Ohio. It has pleased some of Mr. Lincoln's biog- raphers to represent this removal of his father as a flight from the taint of slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth. There were not at the time more than fifty slaves in all Hardin county, which then composed a vast area of territory. It was practically a free community. Lincoln's more fortunate rela- tives in other parts of the State were slave- holders ; and there is not the slightest evi- dence that he ever disclosed any conscientious scruples concerning the institution." Again : " The lives of his father and mother, and the history and character of the family before their settlement in Indiana, were topics 228 tip07t which Mr. Lincoln 7iever spoke but with great rehtctance and significant reserve. In his family Bible he kept a register of births, marriages and deaths, every entry being care- fnlly made in his own hand-writing. It con- tains the date of his sister's birth and his own ; of the marriage and death of his sister ; of the death of his mother ; and of the birth and death of Thomas Lincoln ; the rest of the rec- ord is almost wholly devoted to the Johnstons and their numerous descendants and connec- tions. It has not a word about the Hanks or the Sparrows. It shows the marriage of Sally Bush, first with Daniel Johnston, and then with Thomas Lincoln ** but it is entirely silent as to the marriage of his own mother. It does not even give the date of her birth^ but barely rec- ognizes her EXISTENCE and demise to make the vacancy which was speedily filled by Sarah Johnston.'' And again : "An artist was painting his portrait and asked him for a sketch of his life. He gave him this brief memorandum : ' I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin county, Kentucky, at a -point within the now county 229 of La Rue, a mile or a mile and a half from where Hodgen's mill now is. My parents being dead and my own memory not serving, I know of no means of identifying the precise locality. It was on Nolin Creek.' '' And again : " To the compiler of the 'Dic- tionary of Congres ' he gave the following : ^Born Feb. 9, 1809, ^^ Hardin county, Ken- tucky. Education defective. Profession a lawyer. Have been a Captain of Volunteers in the Black- Hawk war. Postmaster at a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature, and was a member of the Lower House of Congress.' " Further : "To a campaign biographer who applied for particulars of his early history, he replied that they could be of no interest. Mr. Lincoln communicated some facts to this biog- rapher about his ancestry which he did not wish published then." Again : " Life among the Hankses the Lin- colns and the Enlows was a long way below life among the Bushes, and Sarah was the proudest of the Bushes.'' And again : " We are told by Col. Chapman 230 that Abe's father, Tom lyincoln, habitually treated him with great barbarity. Mr. lyincoln through life took little notice of his father." And again : "In the gallery of family por- traits painted by Dennis " (Hanks) " every face looks down upon us with the serenity of inno- cence and virtue. There is no spot on the fame of any of them.. No family could have a more vigorous or chivalrous defender than he, or one who repelled with greater scorn any rumor to their discredit. The Knlow story ! Dennis almost scorned to confute it ; but, when he did get at it, he settled it by a mag- nificent exercise of invective genius. He knew ' this Abe Enlow ' well, he said, and he had been^dead precisely fifty-five years. But, whenever the truth can be told without dam- age to the character of a Lincoln or a Hanks, Dennis will tell it candidjy enough, provided there is [^no temptation to magnify himself* His testimony, however, has been sparingly used throughout these pages ; and no state- ment has-been taken from him, unless it was more or ^;. less corroborated "by some one else. The better part of his evidence Mr. Herndon gi'^^. ' S^SrP^'' ^^w^^^^-lyi?'^ ( ■? g^^ , ''^rl^^'^-" ^^^-%H rP^^^ ^MtjmP^M^M 41^^^^%%' ^fe3\ ^^E^^^^H^^E^^irall^''' hL^ ^^^I's-" ,^^^|^^HS^^^^^^^I ."^ Lincoln in Standing Publuie, with Allen Tinkerton on liis right and Gen. LaFayette C. Baker on his left, heads of Detective Departments. WESLEY ENLOE At the Age of 8r. Son of Abraham Eni.oe. The most striking similarity between Mr. Ivincoln and Wesley Enloe is their physical formation and charac- teristics, which may be seen from the above compara- tive standing- likeness. 231 took the precaution of reading carefully to John Hanks, who pronounced it substantially true; and that circumstance gives it undeni- able value." I quote from " Horton's Youth's History of the Great Civil War." Mr. Horton was a cit- izen of New York. In his biographical sketch of Abraham Lincon, among other things, he says : '' He had the misfortune not to know who his father was; and his mother, alas, was a person to reflect no honor upon her child. Launched into the world an outcast, and started on the road of being without parental care, and without the advantage of even a common-school education, he certainly was entitled to great credit for gaining even the limited mental culture which he possessed. He ran away from his wretched home at the age of nine, to escape the brutal treatment of the man who had married his mother and was forced to get his bread by working on a flat- boat on the Mississippi." In the preface to the first volume of his biog- 232 raphy Mr. .Herndon says : "With a view to throwing a light upon some attributes of Lin- coln's character heretofore obscure, and thus contributing to the great fund of history these volumes are given to the world. It is alike just to his memory and the proper legacy of mankind that the whole truth con- cerning him should be known. If the story of his life is truthfully and courageously told — nothing colored or sup- pressed ; nothing false either written or sug- gested — the reader will see and feel the real presence of the man. If, on the other hand, the story is colored or the facts in any degree suppressed, the reader will be not only misled, but imposed upon as well. At last the tmth will come and no man fteed hope to evade it. Lincoln's character, I am certain will bear close scrutiny. I am not afraid of you in this direction. Don't let anything deter you fiom digging to the bottom. In drawing the por- trait tell the world what the skeleton was with Lincoln. What gave him that peculiar mel- ^33 aiicholy. What cancer had he inside. Espe- cial attention is given to the history of his youth and early manhood ; and while dwelling on this portion of his life the liberty is taken to insert many things that would be Gmitcd or suppressed in other places where the cast-iron rules that govern magazine writing prevail. Mr. Lincoln was my warm, devoted friend. I always loved him, and revere his name to this day. My purpose to tell the truth about him need occasion no apprehension ; for I know that God's naked truth, as Carlyle puts it, can never injure the fame of Abraham Lincoln. Some persons will doubtless object to the narrative of certain facts which appear here for the first time, and which they contend should be consigned to the tomb. Their pre- tense is that no good can come from such ghastly exposures. To such over-sensitive souls, if any such exist, my answer is that these facts are indispensable to a full knowl- edge of Mr. Lincoln in all the walks of life." The forgoing is Mr. Herndon's apology for writing his faithful life of Abraham Lincoln. He savshe loved Mr. Lincoln and revered his 234 name. Moreover he says he was the personal depository of the larger part of the most val- uable Lincolniana in existence. Hear what no less authority than Mr. Horace White says of Mr. Herndon's peculiar qualifi- cations for the task of writing a true charac- terization of Abraham Lincoln : " What Mr. Lincoln was after he became President can be best understood by knowing what he was be- fore. The world owes more to William H. Herndon for this particular knowledge than to all other persons taken together. It is no exaggeration to say that his death removed from earth the person who, of all others, had most thoroughly searched the sources of Mr. Lincoln's biography and had most attentively, and also lovingly, studied his character. He wasnineyearsthe junior of Mr. Lincoln. Their partnership began in 1843 and it continued until it was dissolved by the death of the senior member. Between them there was never an unkind word or thought. As a portraiture of the man Lincoln — and this is what we look for above all things else in a biography — I venture to think that Mr, Herndon's work will never be surpassed.'' 235 PART III.— FURTHER FOLK-LORE. I quote from a letter received from Rev. S. E. Kennedy, of Davis, Indian Territory, of date July 7, 1898. The Davis Weekly News, of his home town, says of him : " Rev. S. E. Kennedy is pastor of the Christian Church here, and is loved and esteemed universally by all who have the pleasure of knowing him. He wrote : " 'My grandfather and grandmother, John and Fannie Kennedy, lived neighbor to Abra- ham Enloe in North Carolina, and were well acquainted with both Abraham Enloe and Nancy Hanks. My grandmother was born about 1775. Her story of the Enloe-Hanks embroglio was substantially as follows : ' The father of Nancy Hanks was a drunkard and was so cruel to his wife and children that he was imprisoned and made to make shoes as a punishment. The mother of Nancy Hanks was forced because of her inability to support them to bind her children out. Abraham Enloe took Nancy, and a man by the name 236 of Pratt took Mandy. Mr. and Mrs. Pratt were kind to Mandy and taught her to card and spin and weave. Mandy did well and married Samuel Henson and moved across the mountains. Abraham Enloe became en- tangled with Nancy and caused her to be taken to Kentucky and to be married to Tom Lincoln, who kept a stillhouse there. Abra- ham Enloe promised to give Tom Lincoln five hundred dollars, a wagon and pair of mules if he would marry Nancy Hanks, but after Lincoln had got drunk and attempted to kill Abraham Enloe, they compromised, and Enloe gave Lincoln a mule, a mare and fifteen dollars in money, whereupon Lincoln took Nancy and little Abe back to Kentucky, and I never saw them more.' " Mr. Kennedy says : '' My grandnjother lived to be near ninety, dying about the year 1866. She could neither read nor write, but pos- sessed the most perfect memory I have ever observed. She knew x\braham Enloe before and after they moved across the mountains. Whether my grandparents came with Enloe when he migrated to North Carolina, I do not '2'11 know. What was meant by 'across the moun- tains ' I have forgotten, if I ever knew. " My father and mother moved to We- tumpka, Alabama, in the early 40's. I was born at Wetumpka. Not long after the re- moval of my parents to Wetumpka one of the Enloes also moved from the old North Carolina home, and settled two miles east of Wetumpka. He raised a large family. He is dead, but the family still reside there." I quote from a letter of Mr. James D. Enloe of date May 17, 1899. Mr. Enloe's address is Cedartown, Georgia. He wrote : " During the war, wdiile I was around Petersburg, Va., I was reading the Richmond Dispatch and ran across a communication by John L. Hel- lem. Hellem was my father's sister's son. The article stated that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of Abraham Enloe, an uncle of mine. If he wrote the truth you must be mistaken. But you may be right. My grandfather was named Abraham Enloe and came from either North Carolina or South Carolina and settled on Nolen Creek, 238 Hardin County, Kentucky. Nancy Hanks married Lincoln in that county. I was per- sonally acquainted with Lincoln. I am now in my seventy- sixth year." I quote from a letter from Doctor Thomas H. Hammond of date July 19, 1899. Dr. Hammond then resided in Wildwood, Florida. He wrote : " When I was in Camp Wickliff, Ky., in January, 1862, I heard Lieut.-Col. Wilder, of the 17th Indiana Regiment, say that Abraham Lincoln was an illegitimate. Col. Wilder was a very important man with Gen. William Nelson ; going over the coun- try giving Gen. Nelson information about the roads, bridges, etc., and he was over the coun- try where Lincoln had lived. In December, 1878, I went to Kansas and remained in that State for six years. While there a Baptist preacher, who hailed from Kentucky, asked me if I knew that Lincoln was an illegiti- mate. I told him I had heard it. In 1884 I came to Florida. Professor Borden was in the Confederate Army, and in that country (in Kentucky where Lincoln was born) during 239 the war. He had heard that Lincohi was an illegitimate, and related facts that aroused my interest and curiosity. The Baptist preacher above mentioned, meantime, had come to Florida, but had gone to Taylorsville, Ken- tucky. I wrote to him asking him who the reputed father of Abraham Lincoln was. He did not know himself, coming from a differ- ent part of the State, but his wife and mother did ; his father was Abraham Inlow.'^ I quote from a letter of Mr. Nat R. Ander- son, of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, of date May 28, 1899. He wrote : " I am a native of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Rocking- ham county. That State is where the Lincolns sprang from. Tom Lincoln's father migrated from there to Kentucky. Many of them are still there. They pronounced the name there Link-horn. I never could understand how so great and good a man as " Old Abe " could have descended from such a low breed and entirely worthless a vagabond as Tom Lin- coln. I have read most of the lives of Lincoln- The best were by Ward H. Lamon and W. H. 240 Herndou, his law-partner, but these were sup- pressed. I am now an old man past three score and ten. I remember most of the stirring events since Jackson's second term ; all the leading men and measures, and notwithstanding our difference in party affiliation, I frankly con- fess that no man has interested me mere, from his strange, eventful and lowly life, than Abraham Lincoln. You are undoubtedly due the thanks of every lover of truth and respectability in the land in finding for the immortal Railsplitter an honorable paternity and strong and well- defined ancestry." The following is extracted from a letter re- ceived from G. J. Davie, of Nevada, Texas, bearing date May 5, 1899 : "I was raised on the border of Christian county, Kentucky, on the Tennessee side. I knew many of the En- loes and have all my life known that Lincoln was the son of old Abe Enloe. I was educated at the University of North Carolina, class of '52.'' 241 Following is the full text of a letter of Judge James Shaw upon his perusal of a copy of the first edition of this Genesis : Mount Carroll, III., March 19, 1900. ^^Jkfy Dear Mr. Cathey : '' Your little book was duly received. I have read and re-read it with deep interest. I always knew there was a mystery aboiU the early life of Lincoln.^ but did not know very well what it was. Your book gives me to un- derstand many things I have seen and heard about this wonderful man. The address I have been giving a few times in this part of Illinois is only partly in type. It is mostly an oral address. When I was a boy and later a young man Lincoln practiced law in the courts of Cass county where my father lived. I attended them a good deal. Heard him try the Armstrong murder case at Beardstown, and was present when the jury brought in their verdict of acquittal, and witnessed the memorable scene which then took place. He w^as often at my father's house in those days. Later 242 when I spent five years at Illinois College, Jacksonville, 111., he came often to the conrts there, and I made a habit of attending the trials in that county ; I also used to be about his office in Springfield a good deal when he was in full practice there. The man had a wonderful fascination for me, and took some pains to advise me in preparing myself to be- come a lawyer. His strange, weird, sad face ; his wonderful personality, made a lasting im- pression on me. In my address I have simply talked about him from my personal recollec- tions and from close observation of the man during his rise to greatness. I am full of the subject and have interested our people up here a good deal with these personal recollections, and descriptions of the man and his mental and physical characteristics. I would be pleased to hear from you at any time as to anything in the line you are work- ing up so interestingly. Very truly yours, James Shaw." 243 Rev. Asahel Enloe was for a short while a resident of Murphy, N. C. Since the date of his letter both he and his son with whom he lived have moved from the State, and it is the writer^s information that the old gentleman is dead. His son's whereabouts cannot be now located. The writer enjoyed a very brief ac- quaintance with Rev. Mr. Enloe while he resided in Murphy. He was not tall of stat- nre, but possessed of the proverbially large Enloe nose and ears. In facial form particu- larly from a profile view, was the almost exact counterpart of the similar view of Abraham Lin- coln. His features were homely but strangely pleasant and prepossessing. He was a gentle- man — educated, refined, but familiar as one's grandmother. There was a twinkle of humor about the eye (then blind), and a bubble of homely mirth burst ever and anon in the stream of his conversation. I have often deeply deplored my inability to have known more of him personally. I am resolved to procure for a subsequent edition of this genesis a portrait of him for further illustration of the theory of this vol- 244 lime, if there be one in existence and to be had^ Following is the answers to questions in an interview which I had with him : My age is 8i. My father was named Gil- bert. My grandfather was named Isaac. My father had two brothers, Asahel and Nathaniel. Father and uncle Nathaniel lived and died in York District, South Carolina. They were school teachers. Uncle Asahel moved to Southern Illinois. My profession is Presby- terian minister — preaching since 1851. I never held any political office. I graduated at Davidson College, N. C, in 1847, also at- tended Theological Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina. Most prominent character- istics ]Dhysically of the Enloes are big ears and long noses. My father and Uncle Asahel were teachers. My grandfather was a soldier in the Revo_ lutionary war ; was wounded at Hook's defeat, rendering him unfit for further service during war in army. My father was justice of the peace for many years. My oldest brother, Isaac, was a lawyer and practiced his profess- ion in Mississippi ; he was delegate to two 245 Democratic conventions. M}^ brother John held office of circuit court clerk in York Dis- trict, S. C, for several terms. I first knew Abraham Enloe (alleged father of Lincoln) about 1827. I knew him well, also three of his sons — Aseph, Alfred and Scroup* His sons were all tall, slender and muscular. Alfred learned the blacksmith trade at my father's and was a pleasant man — full of good humor. Can't tell our relation. My father called him "cousin Abram." He was a trader in horses, etc., and in his yearly visits South always visited my father. It was re- lated of him by a Mr. Kennedy, a kinsman, that if he had every dollar but one and knew that by riding across the continent he could get that one, he would make the trip. He loved to practice jokes and to laugh at their results. He was about six feet in height. Never heard of the tradition until after Lin- coln was nominated for the Presidency when I heard the rumor that Lincoln's father was named Enloe — I was then iii IMississippi. AsAHEL Enloe. Murphy, N. C, May 15, 1899. 246 Following is undoubtedly one of the best if not the best pen portrait of Abraham lyincoln in existence. It is by Professor Frank M. Vancil who was, at the writing of this letter (this to the writer), Superintendent of the State Univer- sity Preparatory High School at Lewistown, Montana. Prof. Vancir was born and reared to man- hood in the same neighborhood with Mr. lyincoln in Illinois, was intimately acquainted with him. This physical description Prof. Vancil was so generous as to transcribe from the manuscript of his school history of the United States which he was then engaged in writing: " He was six feet and four inches in height, the length of his legs being out of all propor- tion to his body. When he sat on a chair he seemed no taller than the average man, meas- uring from the chair to the crown of his head but his knees were high in front. He weighed about 180 poundsf but was thin through the breast and had the general appearance of a consumptive. Standing he stooped slightly 247 forward, and sitting he nsnally crossed his long legs or threw them over the arms of the chatr. His head was long and tall from the base of the brain and the eyebrow ; his fore- head high and narrow, inclining backward as it rose. His ears were very large and stood out; eyebrows heavy, j^^tting forward over small, sunken, blue eyes; nose large, long, slightly Roman and blunt ; chin projecting far^'and sharp, curved upward to meet a thick lower lip which hung downward; cheeks flabby and sunken, the loose skin falling in folds^ a mole on one cheek, and an uncom- monly large Adam's apple in his throat. His hair was dark brown, stiff and unkempt; complexion dark, skin yellow, shriveled and leathery. Every feature of the anan— the hollow eyes with the dark rings beneath ; the long, sallow, cadaverous face, his whole air and walk showed that he was a man of sorrow\" Extract from letter of Prof. ErankM. Van- cil, of Lewistown, Mont., of date July i6, 1899. 248 PART IV.— THE BURTON ORATION. author's introduction to MR. burton's ORATION. The fame of "The True Genesis of Abra- ham Lincoln " having gone to that beautiful Northwestern villa-on-the-lakes — Lake Gen- eva, Wisconsin, it came under the e3^e of Mr. John B. Burton, a successful financier and man of letters, residing there. The subject- matter of the little volume at once engaged his serious attention. It had once again fallen under the eye of a peculiarly qualified critic. It had invited the frank and fearless scrutiny of, peradventure, the^ best informed student of Abraham Lincoln living. Mr. Burton, as he says in his oration, had seen Abraham Lincoln and heard his voice. He is and has ahvays been a steadfast believer in all of the principles and doctrines of which Mr. Lincoln was the exponent. He has always been that which Mr. Lincoln, in the years which led up to the war and even until the end of that dread crisis was in sight, from policy was not^ JOHN E. BURTON. 249 an ultra-abolitionist. There has not grown up a citizen of the Republic that is a more loyal Union man. There is no more devoted friend of the broken hero of the armies of the North than he, and the Grand Army of tlie Republic whose reunions he has more than once enjoyed the honor of addressing, has in him a substantial support. But, Mr. Burton, in all that is included in the terms man and citizen, finds his ideal in Abraham Lincoln. In this conception he is cheerfully joined by the majority of his contemporaries in the North, by many of every section of the Repub- lic, and by not a few in every land under the sun. And he is not a blind hero-worshiper. As above mentioned, he is familiar with his hero. There may be other men as well in- formed upon particular epochs or phases of Abraham Lincoln's life, but we fearlessly assert that there is not a man living who is as full of all that pertains to him — as versatile in the wide domain of Liticolniana, as is he. He is the possessor of the rarest, if not the largest, private collection of works of biography alone upon Lincoln in existence, the number of vol- 250 limes now being quite in advance of one thousand. His portraits, paintings, photo- graphs ; his autographs, mementoes and iniique and costly souvenirs, are by the score and hundred. This rare collection, it is need- less to say, represents much means and pains, and his unmatched store of knowledge is the result of many years of penetrative study aided by the finest lights, and all combined are the product of the labor of love. After reading the first edition of these pages, Mr. Burton, being convinced of the truth of the theory therein promulgated, opened a cor- respondence with the writer that is now ripened into personal friendship. He ordered one hundred and fifty copies for circulation among his friends of the Northwest and gave the book his unstinted endorsement. He dived into his deep-sea Lincoln treasure and brought up the suppressed three-volume Life of the President by his old-time friend and law partner. He rummaged the musty tomes of a more recent alcove and hauled forth the one- volume Life, by Ward Hill Lamon, smoth- ered in infancy by aristocratic interdict. These 251 he at once expressed to the writer that the truths that have been temporarily consigned to a quasi-oblivion might be vouchsafed pop. ular access in the light of day. For the above and other valuable Lincolniana, as well as for much highly esteemed information by corres- pondence, we acknowledge unrequited but grateful indebtedness to Mr. Burton, but especially are we his debtor for the oration which follows. It has been our inestimable fortune to read most of the great eulogies, characterizations and pen portraits of iVbraham Lincoln. The stand- ard are those by Emerson, Ingersoll and Wat- terson. These three are esteemed classics in the range of eulogistic Lincolniana. Like all the work of these three gentlemen, they are finished — every stone is hewn v/ithout a jar and laid in its exact place without a flaw, but their structures are rather fantastic than sub- stantial in effect. The oration of Mr. Burton is not so much the production of a skilled craftsman who had had his task assigned by assumed public con- sensus, as it is the product of the self-appointed 252 duty of the thoroughly equipped laboier in the vineyard of usefulness. Neither Emerson, Ingersoll nor Watterson has evinced the close familiarity with the minutest detail of Abra- ham Lincoln's entire career that Mr. Burton evinces in this oration, nor have e'ither treated that career in a manner nearly so heart-thrilling- and practical. It is true the utterance from beginning to end shows the author to be of the ultra class of Lincoln admirers, but this tendency does not neutralize the salutary effect of the general estimate. The oration as a whole is unexampled as a fidelic echo of the popular estimate of Abraham Lincoln. It is particularly the truest voicing of the public mind and heart of the North toward Abraham Lincoln that has yet been articulated. It pos- sesses in an eminent degree the element that will insure popularit}^— the element of sim- plicity — plain, primal ideas clothed in terse and telling Saxon. This was the means em- ployed by Mr. Lincoln himself in reaching the popular heart. It is sweeping yet detailed ; prophetic yet practical ; imaginative yet true. It is terse, ornate, eloquent; critical, reminis- 253 cent and profound. His entire portrayal is one of exceptional vividness and power — the out- lines are strong, well sustained and faithful, and then each minor feature is brought out with the touch of a master — a man conver- sant with his theme. Suddenly and without warning you laugh, or cry, or muse as you traverse the way made immortal by his foot- steps. It will live as long as men speak the language of liberty and union, of gratitude and love : — ABRAHAM LINCOLN. AN ORATION, BY JOHN E. BURTON, OF LAKE GENEVA, WIS. The character of Abraham Lincoln stands so high above all possible wrong-doing that honesty was never mentioned or thought of as a virhte in him. He was not only the best product of pure American civilization which his century pro- duced, but he was, all in all, the best public man and sincerest statesman who has ever figured in the destiny of this nation or in the history of the world. 254 To all right-minded Americans lie is the ripe and rounded product of what every ma?z woiUd like to be^ and he will therefore remain, through all time, the symbol of perfected character. The whole world loves Lincoln because he did what the world knows was right, and he avoided doing what the world knows to be wrong, and it is therefore doubt- ful if any human being will ever again hold a similar position of greatness in a similar and transcendent epoch, or ever fulfill the world's expectations so completely, as did Ivincoln. His fame grows so steadily, so perfectly, so naturally, and so mightily, and the very fiber of his character comes out so brilliantly as the search-light of time reveals him from every possible point of view that the fear among thoughtful men is, that, with the lapse of centuries, his fame may pass the boundary line allotted to flesh and blood and become obscured by entering the realm of the mythi- cal, where he may be lost to the world of struggling men among the gods and the myths which always inhabit the past. He was the child of Love before he was the 255 child of Law. Born, not only in poverty, but surrounded by want and suffering ; favored in nothing; wanting in everything which makes up the joys of life, he trudged, as a child, the trail of sorrow, and was the playmate of Grief, and always above and around his mys- terious young life there hung the shadow of a dark and mystic cloud. It was a literal truth that "he had not where to lay his head," and while he did not eat the "locust and wild honey," and while his raiment was not of "camel's hair," yet his clothing was, almost exclusively, "the skin of wild beasts," from his buckskin pants to the ponderous coon skin cap. A meaner or darker origin cannot well be imagined. Not one ray of genuine hope can be discov- ered to light his childhood. Nature seems to have bruised and hurt him so that in man- hood he might gird himself to bind up the wounds of a bleeding nation. She seems to have handicapped and loaded his patient soul that he might justly hate the oppressors of men in his loftiest estate. She seems to have starved him that he might the better feel the 356 hunger and the yearnings of a downtrodden race. His eyes were allowed to look at the sunlight through the greased paper windows of the primitive hut and log school house, that he might, in his conquering prime, ap- preciate the glor}^ of the noonday sun of uni- versal freedom. Nature was his Mother, his Teacher, his playmate, his All, and with a yearning that was never satiate he grew in stature among the grand old trees of the for- est ever surrounded by bird song, flower and fern, and with unsandled feet he walked the rough trail of the pioneer boy straight through over rock and glen to the mountain top of per- fect Sincerity, and as a man stood as natural as a child, yet possessed all the powers and knowledge of his sex and his race in their fullness and purity. Almost wdthout play- mates, he was the companion of unadorned Nature, and with the intuition of the child of Nature^ his heart expanded to the influence of the flight of fowl, the basking fish, the habits of the timid deer, the ways of the wild turkey, and bounded with joy in the season of bloom of the wild crab and the 257 sumach, and resting lazily in the autumn and Indian summer among the ripening nuts and the purpling grape, he studied with joy strange and profound the wondrous move- ments of planet, moon and star. With a growth exceeding six feet and four inches he found himself almost like one awakening from a dream, a giant in stature with mus- cles of iron made memorable by felling the tree and splitting the rail for sturdy use. ' Thus he matured, like a prophet of old, and kept ever close to the great heart of na- ture. As a matured man he could not sleep when the storm had blown the nest and the nestlings from the tree until he had restored them to the mother bird, and could not rest in the prime of his matchless manhood until a race of four millions of fathers, mothers and children w^ere restored to tlieir natural rights after the thunder storm of war had passed, and if we do not anchor his mortal memory to the ocean bed of solid fact and history, I fear the day will yet come when some wild burst in the ruffled flow of human turmoil will claim him as a Christ. Scarcely an 258 attribute of the divine character is wanting in this unique man, who, in all the loneliness of his early life, was unconsciously schooled, trained, perfected and graduated in all that was honest, natural, capable and kind. As a flat-boatman in the city of New Orleans he saw, for the first time, negro boys and girls and young women put up and sold as chattels upon the auction block, and then and there the mordant sunk deep into his very soul, and he said to his companion, " Thafs wrongs and if ever I get a chance to hit it^ by God^ Pit hit it hardy The "painted lizard" of human slavery had been photographed forever on his mind and memory, and he bided his time with the patience of a God until the day should come and until the hour had struck when, with a single blow, he could make good that oath, and so, later in life, we see him, amid the billows and blood of war, as he calmly says, "Wait and see the salvation of God " — and so it is that the hnman race is waitifi^ to see^ as the years go by, the salva- tion of eternal right forever triumphant over wrong and made possible by his jpatie7ice and perfect hiunanity. 259 His patience, however, did not weaken him or class him as quiescent, for when imposed upon and crowded tow^ard insult or cowardice, or if his cause, when justly stated, was as- sailed by injustice or brutality the sleeping lion showed his fangs and his giant wrath seldom found any bully rash enough to stand in his way when he accepted a challenge. His powerful exhibition when forced by taunt to twice throw the champion Need ham at Wabash Point ; his righteous rage at New Salem when the leader of the bullies of Clary's Grove, Jack Armstrong, tried by foul means, to get the advantage over him, and again when his excited men in the Black Hawk War attempted to kill the friendly Indian, defying practically the brawn and muscle of the whole regiment, all prove his practical manliness, if occasion demanded, and such was his physical prowess that few men in all that Western country ever wished to dispute his standing. The great dream of the centuries seems to have blossomed in his eventful life, and the more we learn of it the more we come to 26o realize and to know that in him was the Per- fect Man in the sanest and soundest sense of the word, physically, mentally and morally. Poverty made him good ; suffering made him great ; circumstances made him President ; fidelity made him beloved ; courage made him heroic and martyrdpm made him immortal. You may search the minutest records of recorded time and you cannot find another character who made so few mistakes during the chaos of such trying ordeals, or who pos- sessed on all great occasions that sublimity of faith and courage in action, as mark and make the character of Abraham Lincoln ; neither could you find another man who could control, and even guide to glory, all his impetuous subordinates in the heat of conflict and yet without offence compel them to unconscious obedience in the fulfillment of a destiny which he alone could read in the dusk of deathless performance. The record of this world does not show an- other character wdio was schooled in almost continuous failure i7t youth and early man- hood^ in order that he might the better serve 26l as the successful and great commander in the most momentous epoch of human progress. No where in the library of nations can you find another character so varied in ail experi- ences, and yet where every experience was clearly given for the perfect formation of a character unique and matchless. lyook back over forty years and see a boy ever obedient, even where obedience was not especially com- mendable, yet always obedient ; as a son, wise, thoughtful and obliging; as a pupil al- most a prodigy, and with a burning zeal fur useful knowledge beyond all precedent ; as a boatman, capable of utilizing the rough ex- perience of the Mississippi river ; as a soldier in the Black Hawk War, little better than a failure because his heart was too big to ex- ercise the cruelties of Indian warfare ; as a lover, sincere, poetic and ideal, almost to the border line of insanity ; as a debater, candid, clear, oiiginal, truthful; as a lawyer, honor- able, just, logical ; as a writer, fair, witty, useful ; as a candidate, weak, but earnest and ever conscious of his superiority ; as an an- tagonist, formidable, real, full of surprises and 26a dangerous ; as a victor, modest, gracious and benevolent ; as a man, possibly crafty, for a good purpose, but always natural, frank and winning and always commanding and con- scious of his higher qualifications; as a leader, slow, always preparing, always aware of the gravity of the situation, action well-timed, and always sustained ; as a patriot, ambitious, but an ambition that never crowded or even approached the limit of his patriotism, there- fore absolutely safe in all emergencies ; as a martyr, beautiful beyond that of saint or scientist, and as a memory his was and is the dearest, the gentlest and most God-like. I have seen Abraham lyincoln and heard his voice. This is to me a happy recollec- tion. From my childhood to this hour I have always kept every printed word which has fallen from his lips. It is the literary pride of my life that I have preserved with loving care all the books, w^orks, biographies, and printed souvenirs of this real man of men, until now I shall soon pass the i,ooo- volume line and still know that the future is growing with new works perennially. With 263 other nieii it was literary achievement ; the triumphs of war ; the aggrandizement of con- quest ; the glory of new discovery, or the flight of imagination in the kingdom of art or song; but with Lincoln it was character, character^ CHARACTER. This is why his name grows with each succeeding year. This is why our American schools, as well as the schools in foreign lands, are making the 12th day of February a green spot in the dusty road of school routine, and are telling to the millions of boys and girls the story of a true patriot, a pure man, a character beyond re- proach, the safest model of citizenship, the Agamemnon of moral power throughout the world. It is the pride of millions of men and wo- men to be able to say, "/ have seen Abraham Lincoln and heard his voice.''' Time will en- hance the value of everything he ever touched and hallow his every word. No other charac- ter is known to the children of men who was more bashful or tenderly sensitive to direct compliment. No man ever feared praise more than he, and no man ever possessed a su- 264 premer contempt or indifference to unjust criticism or slander, and no man ever lived who was more conscious of his own actual worth and his ability to use that worth for ihe good of others. No man at his death was ever so universally or so sincerely mourned, as Lincoln. The world wept as a young child at its father^s bier. His funeral train was fourteen hundred miles long and his mourners moistened wuth sincerity's tears the soil of every civilized land, while official history re- quired nine hundred and thirty pages to print the plain record of telegram, resolution and sorrow of the nations. He was not really an orator, as the world goes, yet his speech on the battlefield of Gettysburg, his inaugural address are terse and treasured classics and ranks with any say- ings that time has preserved from the lips or pen of Cicero, Pericles, Phillip or Phociaii. No orator ever touched the tender cords which sweep the heartstrings in the soul of woman- hood more deftly than he when he said, while pleading the case of the widow of the old soldier of 181 2: "Time rolls on. The heroes 265 of 1776 have passed away and are encamped on the other shore. The old soldier has gone to his rest. — Crippled, blinded and broken, his widow comes to me and to you, gentlemen of the jury, to right her wrongs. She ivas not ahvays thus. She was once beautiful as the morning. Her step was as light, her face as fair and her voice as siveet as ever rung in the lanes of old Vir- ginia. Now she is poor, defenseless. Shall we, too, cast her of? " His courtroom was in tears. His suit was won. No man ever held woman in higher esteem than Abraham Lincohi, and woman to-day is his loyal lover and defence, through ill and good report, and through her there shall be engravened the ideal Lincoln in the minds of millions yet unborn. If all men could be like Lincoln there would be no need of heaven. His pattern w^as formed in the Foundry of Fate, and when the world's greatest epoch had closed the mould was found to fit "the head of the cor- ner." See his tall form sway under a sorrow almost infinite as he stands at the coffin of his dead benefactor, Bowlin Greene, and 266 although a man of thirty-three, his heart breaks with uncontrolled emotion as he tries to speak the words of gratitude and tender eulogy which he longed to express, but in the agony of his soul's despair he fails to make a sound, and, in a burst of overwhelm- ing tears and groans, he leaves the scene. Never did a human heart offer to the dead a truer tribute. Language can never tell the depth of his feelings and history will never record a wail more tender or a lay more sweet and divine. When the tender life of his first pure love went out and Ann Rutledge was laid in her grave ; his was the pathetic voice which, in poignant grief, cried aloud as his vanishing reason all but left him : "/ can never let the rains^ the snozv a?td the stornislpeat 7ipon her ^ravef'' A deeper anguish never pierced the heart of an honest man since Christ wept in Gethsemane. Oh, what a legacy, what a heritage for us and ours and our heirs forever after us, and for the world, as Time, the Saviour reveals his growing worth ! Oh, the great, broad, 267 patient, courageous man, so calm in the tem- pest that radicals could not rush him and the trumpet of war could not intimidate him ! His was the courage of the sublimest order ; absolutely perfect in faith and that faith founded upon eternal justice and upon his perfect trust in a God of justice, and in his own people and upon his own true and right- eous self. You have but to put your ear to the welded rail of the past and the echoes of forty years will come back to you, and above the din and confusion of that awful period you will hear the clear, patriotic voice of a nation and that triumphant song, "ire are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.^^ This mighty surge of song is not the wail of despair nor the measured tone of defiance, but the belated and mighty response of thirty millions of patriots sounding the cry which comes from the deep, w-elling passion of patriotism, echoing across plain and river, and over hill and mountain top, that a million defenders invincible as an army with banners were coming in response to his righteous call 268 to save from dissolution and death the one ?ia- iion which was and is, and is to be^ the hope of the world. How strange it all seems to us now ! The world will always see him, in the National storm of passion and the flow of fraternal blood, a moral hero^ and in the blast that blinded, he held the helm of State for four dark and terrible years, and until Fate had become fulfillment, and then in the sunshine of peace he appeared in the Capital of Rebel- lion like a closing tableau, holding the trust- ing hand of his innocent boy while the fren- zied negro bows in almost idolatrous worship at his feet, and then he is suddenly lifted, as by some design of fatality, to the realm of earthly immortality. It verily seems as if Fate did play with dates and events, for on the anni- versary of the very day when the starry flag of Ft. Sumter bowed to the bellowing guns of Beauregard four years before, Beecher and his compatriots restored it, in the harbor of Charles- ton, to the breeze of Heaven, and yet before its folds had fairly caught the joyous inspira- tion and while darkness settled upon the land 269 that night his life went out by the hand of the assassin. No man is ever seen so tenderly as when humanity beholds him through the mellow vail of suffering and undeserved adversity. It is then we realize the force of the sentiment that, " Chords that vibrate sweetest music, Sound the deepest notes of woe." It can never be said that religious fanaticism aided him essentially in the completion of his world task ; neither that personal ambition rallied him to sudden success, and although success was his ruling motive, and was, all in all, and through it all, his guiding star, yet that success was grounded upon the solid rock of truth, and through the darkness of that wildest and most tempestuous night of sorrow and suffering he stood, the central figure look- ing over and above the heads of his contem- poraries, like the giant he was, surveying the end and seeing the triumphant vision which was to mark the closing of the most remarka- ble conflict which ever sanctified the battle- ground of nations. 270 It is true that there have been other patriots in other lands than ours, and it is true that patriotism has lived as a principle in all the ages of the past, and that there has existed the calm of dignity and the conciousness of power all through the centuries, btU there has 7iever been bict one Lincoht. Other men have been earnest and other men have been great, and even sincere, and what is still more, have been kind and useful to their fellow men and have helped to grace and crown the ages, and yet, / say, thefe has never beejt but one Lincoln. He did not believe in Christ but he did be- lieve in a God of Justice, in a God that could not tolerate human slavery or injustice among his human kind. He had lived to learn and to know that his own judgment of men was reliable and right, and hence he gradually, but easily and certainly, overshadowed all his associates and contemporaries, and as a char- acter, stands alone from his rough-hewn cradle to his marbled tomb. In all that eventful journey he knew his own ability rightly and neither over-estimated it nor under-estimated 271 it, and he dared to assume dangerous posts of duty, and yet never flinched or doubted. He was therefore greater than the greatest man of his time. He is the Agamemnon of history. . No other man in history seems ever to have centered and focused universal interest in his every and minutest acts and personal character- istics like Lincoln. When standing he towered above his famous opponent, Douglas, fourteen inches, but when both w^ere seated side by side he was but four inches higher, so exceptional were his legs and arms in length compared with his body. In the Illinois Legislature hcjbelonged to the famous " Long Nine,^' the name applied to the nine members from his section, of which he was the tallest, and was called the " Sangamon Chief, '^ their combined hight being fifty-five feet. To them and to him were due the suc- cess of changing the State Capital from Van- dalia to Springfield, Sangamon county, in It is remarkable how many men afterward famous were associated with^ Lincoln during 272 his early or active life, including Peter Cart- wright, famous preacher ; Colonel Ellsworth, first to fall in war ; Colonel Baker, hero who fell at Ball's Bluff; Stephen A. Douglas, patriot and opponent ; Senator Lyman Trumbull, Governor Bissell, General John A.McClernand, Judge David Davis and others. He was born close to the famous Mason and Dixon's Ivine, about 39° 33' north latitude, marking the line limit of slavery and hence naturally conservative as to Northern and Southern opinions. He was not wholly free from the local super- stitions of the Kentucky pioneer times, and the quick and living secrets of nature, while real and understood, still carried a tinge of the marvellous, for night winds, dark forests, sv/elling streams, cries of wild beasts, sudden deaths, moaning trees, and avenging storms, sometimes suggest strange thoughts to the wisest minds. The well-timed hit on the lightning rod of the not over-consistent George Forquer, in his legislative canvass, recalls his clear and force- ful side when his opponent assumed in public the air of a superior and prodded young I^in- coln on his coarse dress of homespun clothes, with lack of experience and ability, and Lin- coln in thoughtful manner replied and, review- ing Forquer's follies and gullible nature as the prey of seductive agents, said that while he perhaps had many or most of the faults ascribed to him, he was grateful that he " did not have to erect a lightning rod over his home to ward off the vengeance of an offended God ^' as Forquer had. As lightning rods were just then introduced and under ban with the ma- jority of the Illinois people Forquer was silenced. The Shields incident, when Lincoln was forced as he thought to accept a challenge to fight a duel, Rafter writing the annonymous letter as a ividow from the." Lost Township,'' shows his final faith and reliance in sound every day man se?ise. James Shields was State Audi- tor, and a rather excitable Irish gentleman from Tyrone, Ireland, and took mortal offense at the letters, as he imagined as a Democrat that they reflected upon his personal honesty in office, and no amount of persuasion by friends could 274 satisfy him of lyincoln's intended good nature^ and so the challenge was forced upon Lincoln^ and having choice of weapons, he, on the same principle which in later years actuated John F. Porter in Congress with Pryor, chose cav- alry broadswords. The day came and the parties met — Shields, a little, large-headed and fiery man, and lyincoln of giant stature. At the final moment Shields gladly agreed ta withdraw if his antagonist would assert that he only meant to make a political point as a Whig against a Democrat. Lincoln sensibly agreed. Asked later what he intended to da had they fought, he said, " I should have used the advantage of my arms and legs and simply split him from head to heel.'^ It was nothing less than unique that upon his election to the Presidency he should ap- point as his Cabinet and constant advisers the very men who were his opponents in the Re- publican National Convention for the nomina- tion at Chicago in i860, and yet by that act he had calmed and pacified all wounded aspi- rations, and though regarded as a dangerous move politically, it showed Lincoln's just and 275 "benevolent heart, his far-seeing judgment and his cahii consciousness in his own ability to remain absolutely President and Commander- in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. The offense and as some felt, the ungrate- ful if not disloyal, conduct of his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, in the treacherous storm and excitement of his sec- ond campaign in 1864, when Chase publicly became a candidate against his chief, again showed how truly great Lincoln was, and his words on this occasion and his subsequent act in appointing Secretary Chase, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, proves him the towering political master and safe, unselfish patriot that he was. The intense honesty shown in his settling accounts with the Government when post- master at New Salem, when he months after- wards produced the exact amount to a dollar and a cent in the adjustment, and not only €xact but the identical coins received by him in the office, all laid away sacredly awaiting 276 the official accounting, although he had been sorely pressed in the meantime for money. His stories have been retold, repeated and revamped until much falsehood has been mixed with original, all of which were pointed and practical and always prepared and thought out for purpose and to convince forcibly. A I^incoln story usually carries its own evidence of truth and originality. Some- times they carried not only conviction but were calculated to cut or even humiliate if necessary. When his early antagonist at law, rather fresh and frothy, had talked at a rapid rate until he had tired court and jury, and for lack of facts sat down, to the relief of all, Lincoln in his thoughtful way said : ''Your honor has observed the misfortune of the op- posing counsel, as it is clear that he cannot work his mind and his voice at the same time, for the instant his tongue starts it goes so fast that the mind ceases to act. In fact he reminds me of the first steam vessel which appeared on the Sangamon river. It was noted for its efforts to navigate with ease, but it had a five-foot whistle and only a three-foot 277 , boiler, and every time they blew the whistle the boat had to stop still." This carries the true Lincoln brand. The coarse jokes attributed to Lincoln never existed, and his intimates give testimony to that fact. In his associations with his Cabi- net members he gave constant proof of his innate manliness, and nothing pleased him more in business meetings or official work than for all to call him Lincoln. He disliked to be called Mr. President or Your Excel- lency, but felt relief to be called Lincoln, and always spoke to his Ministers as Bates, Stan- ton, Chase and Seward, though he never missed seeing and appreciating the ludicrous and funny side to all things. He was born a reasoner, and when a mere boy, after borrowing a copy of Weem's Life of Washington, and having left it in the log crevice in his Indiana home where it got soaked by a shower during the night, he agreed to work three days pulling corn for the close-fisted Crawford to settle the account; he first asked if the three days' work was to pay for the damaee done the book or for the book 278 itself, and as Crawford thought the book of no use, he said it would pay for the book, and so lyincoln became owner of his first actual book, and it proved a good bargain too ; and many a reader to-day would gladly pay three hundred dollars for this same book could they secure it for posterity. His check for ^5.00, made out while Presi- dent, payable to " the one-legged colored man or bearer," and which has been immortalized by the Lincoln History Society of New York City ; his letter to the little boy who met him on the street after he was nominated for Pres- ident, spoke to him and shook hands with him, and who was taunted by his playmates in Springfield afterward for claiming Lin- coln's acquaintance, until the great-hearted man wrote in answer to the boy's childish letter of appeal and stated over his signature while President of the United States, that he was glad to certify that he saw and remem- bered the boy and shook hands with him, and thus the boy became a hero. This same sincerity and frankness w^as ever his strength and safety, and served as faith- 279 fully in the diplomacy of Nations and as easily and verily changed the fate of the American Continent, for while the trained and erudite Seward battled nervously with the ponderous and lugubrious ambiguities of Ivord Palmerston, Lincoln had written a plain letter in plain and touching language to Queen Victoria direct, and appealed to her as a pure and noble woman to assure him in his trying ordeal against the sins of a century, that his efforts as a man threatened by re- bellion yet seeking to maintain a friendly :government in opposition to the spread of hu- man slavery, should not be injured and weighted by England's enmity. On a bright Sunday morning he received her more than Queenly answer by mail, saying she realized the burdens and dangers to his government, and that slavery should not receive her aid or influence, and that the American government imder his guidance would never need to fear from her people while she was acknowledged Queen of England. He had won by a man's sense what diplomacy never secured, and it 28o was long afterward that Seward learned this great historic fact. Lincoln's was the faith that never faltered, and was built on truth and sense. Lincoln was pure in heart. He not only loved right, but he was grand enough to do right. He hated wrong and he did no wrong. He forgave to the last and loved forgiveness itself, and yet he needed little or none for himself. Hear his tender, fatherly voice as he whispers to little " Blossom " the pardon for her erring brother. See him as he dic- tates that immortal dispatch saving the tired soldier and sleeping sentinel, Scott, from an unmerited death. Think of his transcendent attitude in his position of almost unlimited power, as his acts of forgiveness fret and chafe the impatient generals who clamor for disci- pline at the expense of life, as he says : '•''Gen- tlemen^ I cannot take the lives of these boys who love their country but zvho have broken the rules of warfare in obedience to the demands of ex- hausted 7iatnre.'^^ His mantle has fallen upon no man. It is the heritage of America, the 28e crown jewel of the world, and the hand of sacrilege alone shall ever touch it. Let not the prude or the supercilious as- sume to blush at his humble, or even doubtful origin. Let them brush their dormant intel- ligence and remember who was William the Conqueror of England, and who was Charles Martel or " Charles the Hammer," who saved Christian civilization to Europe and who drove back the swelling tide of Moslemism in the decisive battle of Poitiers. Let them re- member that Abraham Lincoln was a man and as a man was the greatest complimejit that has ever been given or paid to the human race^ and likewise that he was never the champion of the prude, the dude or the false ; and aris- tocracy has no power to either harm or heighten his glory now, and neither prudes, puppets nor apologizers have any place in the following of his mighty train. Lincoln could not sing a note, but music was to his soul a thing divine, and poetry and song may lay their garlands upon his tomb with perfect confidence for his character can absorb all their beauties and will glorify every 282 author. His was the hand that wrote the request : " Please ask Philip Phillips to sing again to-night ' Your Mission^'^ but do not say I said so." Abraham Lincoln is the man who gave his first biographer a kindly, but knowing look when he found that he had stated that Lin- coln had read Plutarch^s Lives and had turned their sterling virtues to his own good account and character, who did not even correct the statement in the proof-sheet ; but a week later when that same proof-sheet had been revised and was then ready for the printer, he, with equal kindness, and with a twinkling eye, informed his biographer, Mr. John Locke Scripps, that in the mea7itime he had read Plu- tarch from cover to cover and had not skipped even a single word, and that now the biogra- phy was correct and true and might be printed. Here is a man who, while he may have said boyish things, and even followed the rougher customs of rollicking youth in the sturdy land of the pioneer, yet in all the years of the prime of his maiihood he zvas ?iever know?i to say a foolish thing, A man who constantly 283 believed in himself and believed that he was being fitted for a great purpose and went on patiently, and not unconsciously, preparing to accept the highest post when the hour should strike. A man who was never sur- prised by the biggest events ; the patient, sad, and yet ever-rippling humorist who was great enough in the darkest hour to turn the serious incident into sunshine and laughter, thus giv- ing to his nature that natural and joyous vent from the dangers of growing and crushing responsibility. The man who never received or paid out an ill-earned or dishonest dollar in his whole life. The man to whom criticism and discour- agements served only as friction the better to propel the great engine of his mind as it tugged on the up-grade of events. The man who stood self-poised while he saw and real- ized that the die was being cast and saw the molten metal of his own wondrous history poured into the mould of immortality. Surely Fate loved Lincoln, and in her long- ings she gave him the deathless kiss that he might never leave her. While others quaked with fear at the gath- 284 ering storm he grasped the hehn with giant grip as the great Ship of State rode into the roar and crash of the hurricane and held it firm and safe until the lightnings had ceased to play and until the vanishing clouds threw their lessening shadows over her deck, and until the big waves had done their worst and until ripples only patted her storm-beaten sides and the great white harbor was once more in view with its sunshine and its peace. Romance and miracle blend in the heavens as the sun bursts upon the scene, for as the last, long peal of thunder dies away in the distance, and the Rainbow of Peace appears^ a sudden bolt from the clearing sky struck him dumb and dead on the deck and the Great Loving Captain had gone to his reward in the flower of his faith and in the fill strength of his giant manhood. It has been said that "God buries his work- man but carries on his work," and this great truth covers the life and martyrdom of Abra- ham Ivincoln, the bravest, the most courageous, the most useful, the kindest, the tenderest, the sweetest memory that has tlmsfar appeared^ i?i hu- man formy within the Vestibule of Time, 285 PART v.— ENLOE GENEALOGY. Following we submit in the form of per- sonal correspondence the result of the re- search of certain branches of the family. These letters were interchanged beginning in 1894, four years before the w^'iter knew any- thing of this book, and ending with 1899 when the publication had quickened interest. They are printed verbatim from original manuscript forwarded us by the courtesy of Dr. I. N. Enloe, of Jefferson City, Mo., and to which we have alluded in our introduction. We invite the reader's careful study of our Enloe genesis throughout for in it history may have an honorable Scotch origin for Abraham Lincoln. In a future edition, more elaborate throughout, we purpose to include a full history of the Enloes. This edition with its predecessors are particularly meant hastily to recover and secure passing data upon the tradition : Jefferson City, Mo., June 23, 1899. Dr. Thomas E. Enloe, Nashville, Tenn. : Dear Sir and Friend : — In compliance 286 with your request and my promise made at Nashville, August 29, 1898, while on my way to Chickamauga — will now give you such ready and accessible information as I possess in regard to the Enloe family, by submitting a copy (corrected and revised) of a letter writ- ten to Sam G. Enloe, of Mulberry Grove, 111., bearing date of May 5, 1894, also his reply of May II, 1894, which read as follows : Jefferson City, Mo., May 5, 1894. Sam G. Enloe, Mulberry Grove, III.: Dear Sir : — Your letter in regard to our relationship, to hand and noted. Am satis- fied we are of the same stock or family. Your great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were brothers, provided your father and B. A» Enloe's father were cousins (that is first full cousins), but am satisfied they must have been second or third cousins. Now, I will proceed to tell you my rela- tionship to the 8th District Congressman of Jackson, Tenn., and then you can figure out our relationship. I am next to the youngest son of Enoch Enloe, he the oldest son of 28; James Enloe, who was a full brother to Isaac Enloe ; Isaac being the grandfather of Benj. A. Enloe, the Congressman. Isaac and James Enloe were both born in York county, South Carolina, about 1791 and 1793 respectively. They were reared by their half brother, Ben- jamin, the only brother they had, so far as I know. So you can see from the above that I and B. A. Enloe, of Jackson, Tenn., are great- grand sons, he of Isaac and I of James Enloe. They having a half brother by name of Ben, and the three were the sons of Enoch Enloe. My father was the youngest son of his father by his last wife, an Irish woman by the name of Jane McCord, whom he married long after his first wife's death (whose maiden name I never knew), and after his oldest son Ben, had married and had quite a family. Have often heard my grandfather, while I w^as quite young, speak of his neph- ews, some of whom were older than him- self (sons of Ben), and with whom he was raised. They were named Enoch, Benjamin, Joel, Abraham, and others I do not remember. His nephew Enoch', was older 288 than grandfather some few years, moved from Tennessee to Missouri a few years after grand- father did, which was in 1828, both settling in this, Cole county, near Russellville. Both lived to be eighty odd years old, and both raised large families. This nephew Enoch, I remember seeing the last years of his life, which was about 1874 (that being the year of his death). Grandfather, James Enloe, died in 1877. We always spoke of, and called this old nephew of grandfather's. Cousin Enoch, for he was my father's first half cousin. Will now try to give the history beginning further back, and it's what I don't know about the Enloe family away back, that in- terests me most. From my oldest brother, James, who is about fifty-six years old, and who has heard grandfather speak of his ancestors during his life, I have information to this effect : It appears that the first of the Enloe stock or family, consisting of two brothers named Isaac and Enoch, both school teachers, settled in South Carolina, having previously taught school or lived for a short time in Maryland. This was some time near 289 the middle of the eighteenth century. Both originally came from Scotland. My great- grandfather, Enoch, was one of these Enloe brothers. Both brothers, Isaac and Enoch, married in South Carolina and raised large families, Isaac's family became very wealthy and remained in that State. Enoch's family later on, say about 1808, moved to Tennessee. Am not able to go any farther backhand am not positive that I am right about names, as it had always occurred to me that my great- :grandfather's name was Isaac, until^brother James, about two years ago, told me that his name was Enoch, and he ought to know, as he often talked to grandfather on the subject ■during his life-time. In 1808 my grandfather moved with his half brother's family from South Carolina to Tennessee — to what part I don't know — both he and his brother Isaac, making Benjamin's home their home, until they were grown up, or nearly so. My grandfather married Nancy Simpson, a sister of his brother Isaac's wife. Isaac and wife both died, leaving three sons, all or- 29P phans, named Benjamin, James and JoeL. Ben was raised by George Leslie, who was- his uncle by virtue of Leslie having married a Simpson. Benjamin still lives in Tennes- see and is the father of Benjamin A., the Con- gressman, Dr. Thomas and Dr. James, both, of Nashville, Tenn. James and Joel were- brought to Missouri by my grandfather^, who went back to Tennessee after them, after the death of their father, and some years after he had located in Missouri, and he raised; Joel, and Wm. Leslie raised James, who was also an uncle by virtue of having married a. Simpson. James married his cousin, Polly Enloe, who was a daughter of grandfather (regardless of his, grandfather's protest), and moved to Texas, raised, or partly raised, a family, all of whom are now dead, includ- ing himself and wife. Joel married a Miss Amos near Russellville, Mo., and died a few years later, leaving one son and two daugh- ters, all of whom are still living. His son is named Isaac, and lives near Russellville, Mo. Now, as to grandfather's family, I give it last, as he was the youngest of the two 291 brothers. James Enloe was born in York County, South Carolina, February 19, 1793; moved with his brother Ben to Tennessee in 1808, was married about 18 13 to Miss Nancy Simpson, and in 1830-31 moved to the State of Missouri, settling near Russellville in Cole •County, where he entered land and farmed, devoting most of his attention to horses and politics, representing Cole County in the State Legislature once, and Moniteau, after it was cut off from Cole County, twice ; raised a family of nine children, and died in 1877 at his youngest son Abraham's home in Mon- iteau County, where he was making his home. His children were named as follows : Enoch, John S., Hugh, Isaac, Jennie, Polly, Ben ja- min, William and Abraham. My father Enoch was born in Barren County, Kentucky, where his father had moved temporarily May 19, 1814, he moved with his father to Missouri in 1830-31 ; married Miss Jane Murray in 1837, by which union fifteen children were born, named as follows : James, the oldest, now about 56 years old ; Polly, Pollyann, and Nancy, 292 Thomas, Hugh, Maggie, Jennie, Barbara,. Henry, Enoch, Emma, John S., Isaac N.,, Sarah and Abraham. Polly, Pollyann, Nancy and Abraham died young. My father died in 1873, mother in 1887. Brother James lives at Versailles, Morgan County, Mo., where his two oldest sons, H. King and Lone, are in the dry goods busi- ness. Brother Thomas lives near Russell- ville in Cole County, and is farming and owns, the farm so long the home of his grand- father. Hugh L. Enloe lives in Russellville,. and is a dry goods merchant. Sister Maggie is the wife of A. J. Thompson, and they live in California, Mo. Sister Jennie on my father's old farm in Moniteau County, eight miles southeast of California, Mo., and is the wife of W. M. Gregory. Barbara lives near California and is the wife of W. H. Allen. Henry Enoch Enloe lives in Fresno, Cal.. Emma lives at Eugene, Oregon, and is the wife of George Cornell. Dr. John S. Enloe, has been practicing medicine at St. Thomas, Mo., twenty miles south of here, but has sold out. His wife and three children are witk 293 her mother, and he is now in New York City, attending a post-gradnate course of lectures at the Polyclinic Hospital School of Medi- cine. He will likely locate in the State again upon his return. I come next in order. I was born in i860 in Moniteau County, on the farm where nearly all the children were raised, located eight miles southeast of Cali- fornia. Graduated from the Missouri Medical College, St. Louis, class of 1883, located at St. Thomas, Mo., where I practiced till Octo- ber, 1889, when I sold out to my brother John, went to New York, spending part of the winter there, attending a post-graduate course, after which I located in Jefferson City, where I have practiced ever since, married Miss Rebecca J. Short, October 12, 1886. Our family consists of two girls and two boys. The oldest six years old and the youngest ten months, name Loyce, Ada, David and Justin. I was elected Coroner of this county on the Republican ticket in 1884, and defeated for Representative of this county in 1888. Old cousin Enoch Enloe's family are, as a rule. Democrats, while the descendants of 294 grandfather, with the exception of John S., his second son, are all strong in the Republi- can faith. Will state that I was both pleased and sur- prised to receive a letter from you, not know- ing that such a man was in existence; also glad to note, judging from indications, that you are prospering and right in politics. Would be pleased to have you visit me, and there are other Enloes in Missouri who would make you feel at home among them, should you ever see fit to pay this section of the country a visit. Now, take your time and give me all the information you have in regard to your family, and the same will be appreciated by me. Very respectfully yours, I. N. Enloe. Mulberry Grove, IlIv., May, 1893. Dr. I. N. Enloe: Dear Sir : — Yours of the 5th to hand and in reply will say that I am not well posted on the genealogy of the Bnloe family, but I know from the names that you give me, that you are of the same stock and started from 295 the same section of the country, York county, South Carolina. You say that you don't think that my father could have been a full cousin to the father of B. A. Enloe, the Ten- nessee cong-ressman. I will give the genealogy as given by my father in the history of Bond county, 111. He says that his father was the son of Isaac Enloe, a Scotsman who came to this country from Scotland near the middle of, or about the year 1750. There w^ere tw^o brothers, as you say, Isaac and Enoch. My father's name was James. He was born in 1803 in York county, South Carolina. His father's name was Isaac and he was the son of one of the original Scotch brothers that came to this country from Scotland about 1750, and served in the Revolutionary war. My grandfather had a brother named Gilbert that never left South Carolina, so far as I know. He was there and still living in 1868. My grandfather left South Carolina in about 1768 and came to Davidson county, Tenn., where he taught school for some time, and 3^011 will find that he is given quite a prominent place in the history of that county, as an educator. 296 He left Tennessee with his family and arrived in Madison county, 111., in 18 16. Moved to Bond county. 111., in the year 1818. My grandfather was a surveyor and teacher in this county from 1820 until he became too old to follow these vocations further. He died in this county as near as I can remember about 1852. He was a Presbyterian in re- ligious belief as most of the Enloes are, I be- lieve. If my grandfather ever had any broth- ers except Gilbert, I never heard my father say anything about them, and don't think that there were any sisters of grandfather and Gilbert; never heard of any. The names of my father's brothers were Kzekiel, James, Enoch, Nathaniel and Isaac. Isaac died in. this county only a few years ago near 75 years old. Enoch lived and died in Wisconsin. There are none of Asahel Enloe's sons or daughters now living. I have two brothers living here, I. N. and E. L. Enloe. I. N. is older than myself and was also in the army during the war, as also was my youngest brother, E. h. , and myself. Both rose to the command of our companies. I went through 297 without being wounded, but I. N. was shot through the leg, in front of Atlanta. All the Enloes here are Republicans of the strictest sect, except E. L. He is a Demo- crat. During the war we captured an Enloe near Holly Springs, Miss., and I had never heard of him before, but 1 knew him as soon as I saw him. He was named Nathaniel Enloe, and was a cousin of James Enloe, the Presbyterian preacher that lived at Holly Spring during the war. I have also heard my father and uncles speak about Ben and Joel Enloe, who lived in the southern part of the State. Ben used to represent his county in the Illinois Legislature when the capital of our State was at Vandalia, in Fayette county, only ten miles from my place. If I mistake not they lived in White county, and were both very large men and both used to be at Van- dalia during the sessions of the legislature. Ben would raise a row in the legislature or on the streets, and Joel would do his fighting. As Joel was a man that weighed about 250 pounds, and was stout, he nearly always came out all right. I have heard my father tell 298 about Ben having his fun with our represen- tative, Col. Bentley of Greenville ; also with Col. McGlouthlin, of Vandalia. I think that Ben was there before the time of Lincoln and Douglas, but these times are now passed. I saw by the papers during the war that there was an Enloe that was a member of the legis- lature of your State, called to his door and shot by a band of bushwhackers, as his wife stood by his side. I don't remember what county he represented, but think it was St. Genevieve county. So it appears that at least most of the Enloes in the North were loyal and true. Every Enloe of the name here that could go was in the service. I have been since the war, county commissioner, police judge of this city, mayor four times, have been State delegate to the Republican conventions before, and am a delegate this year also, and I think beyond a doubt we will nominate a ticket that will win this fall. I was also post- master here for a term of four years. Well, wishing you success in life, I will close. Would be pleased to hear from you at any time. Sam G. Enloe. 299 I herewith send you a copy of a letter re- cently received from J. B. Enloe, Whittier,. N. C. This branch of the family I had never been able to trace beyond Gilbert, who was a son of the original Bnloes of 1750. This letter tells the story, and gives a pointer that will enable you to become reconciled, as to the meager reports, you have no doubt often heard, that Lincoln was the son of one Abraham Enloe. This tradition is backed with such strons: circumstantial evidence that it convicts. The tradition came to Missouri from Ken- tucky in 1828, and 1835, in an intensely sub- dued form, but was discussed in such a way during the war that the younger generation obtained an inkling of it. The Enloes, Leslies, Simpsons, Shorts, Van Pools are the people I have reference to. They lived at that time in Kentucky, about twenty miles from where Columbus is now located. They were neighbors also in Missouri and but few of the old ones are now living. The J. F. B. letter reads as follows : 300 Whittier, N. C, June 3, 1899. Dr. L N, E?iloe, Jefferso?i City, Mo. : Dear Sir : — Your letter was forwarded to me from Cherokee where I once lived. In reply to your letter I will say that I am sure that we are the same stock. From the best in- formation I have, there were three brothers of the original Enloes who came from the Old Country. They made their first stop in Mary- land, where one of them stayed and raised a family. One of them emigrated to York Dis- trict, South Carolina ; this was my great- grandfather ; I think his name was Gilbert. My grandfather, Abraham Enloe, came over to Rutherford county. North Carolina, and mar- ried a Miss Egerton. He afterwards moved, first above the Indian Mission in Bucombe county, then to Ocona Lufta River, where he resided till his death. He raised nine sons and seven daughters. The other brother of my great-grandfather and one of the original three went to middle Tennessee and settled. One of his descendants, B. A. Enloe, repre- sented the Eighth Tennessee District, as you state in your letter. Some of the Yorkville 30I l)ranch of the family moved to Georgia, and elsewhere. In Georgia they spell their name Inlow. My father is the only one living out of sixteen. He is in his 89tli year. I have always heard that Abe lyincoln was a son of my grandfather, Abraham Enloe. There is a book now written that gives a good history of the Enloe and Lincoln tradi- tion. It is by Jas. H. Cathey, of Sylva, N. C. Yours very truly, J. F. Enloe. [J. F. Enloe is undoubtedly mistaken about a brother of his great-grandfather, and one of the original three, moving to Tennessee. This Tennessee immigrant was either a brother or cousin of his grandfather — Abraham Enloe. He is also mistaken about Gilbert Enloe being his great-grandfather. Gilbert Enloe was the son of Isaac Enloe and belonged to the same generation as J. F. Enloe 's grandfather and was the cousin of his grandfather and, doubt- less, the son of Enoch Enloe, the other of the original Scotch brothers. — The Author.] 302 I have never bad the pleasure of meeting Sam G. Enloe, yet I am satisfied he is an En- loe of the old type. In a letter dated May 28, 1899, he states in substance, that be is fifty-nine years of age, six feet and one-half inches, weight one hundred and eighty. I herewith (without his permission, but know- ing it will not offend him) submit to you an- other letter recently received from him : MUI.BERRY Grove, III., June 6, 1899. Dr, I.N, Enloe: DEAR Sir : — Yours of the 5th received. At first I will give you the names and ages of my sisters and brothers : first, Nancy A. En- loe, born 1830 — 69 years old ; Mary E. Enloe,. born 1832 — 67 years old ; William B. Enloe, born 1834—65 years old; Isaac N. Enloe, born 1836 — 63 years old ; Violet R. Enloe, born 1838 — 61 years old; Samuel G. Enloe, born 1840—59 years old; Emery L. Enloe, born 1842 — 57 years old ; Harriette N. Enloe, born 1845 — 54 years old; Eouisa I. Enloe, born. 1847 — 52 years old ; James S. Enloe, born 1849 — 50 years old ; Cynthy E. Enloe, born. 303 1851 — 4^ years old; Emily Zantavia Enloe, born 1856 — 43 years old. Of these Nancy A., William B., Violet R., Harriet N., James So and Emily Z., are dead, six dead and six living. Father and mother both dead ; mother died in 187 1 and father in 1884. Father had five sisters and brothers, and what I can learn of the stock all over the conntry, they always have been and still are, very prolific. I have but one child, Ernest R. Enloe, born 1872, and now in his twenty-seventh year, he is married and has two children, Loucile E. Enloe, and Rachel Enloe, both girls, one four years old and the other two years old. This is correct so far as my father's and my own families are concerned. Sam G. Enloe. I think beyond a doubt that J. F. Enloe is mistaken as to Gilbert Enloe being one of the old ones that came from Scotland with Enoch and Isaac, but Gilbert was the son of Isaac and was a brother of my grandfather Asahel, and uncle of my father. I have heard my father tell of old Uncle Gilbert many a time, and I have talked with a man since the war 304 who came from there since the war, and he told me that he was well acquainted with old Uncle Gilbert. I don't think that Gilbert was as old as my grandfather, but still he was old enough to be the father of J. F.'s grandfather. So I think J. F. and I are of the same brand of the family. I guess that B. A. Enloe, of Tennessee, is of the Enoch brand. There was during the war a James Bnloe near Holly Springs, Miss. He was a Presby- terian minister, and there were other En- loes lived there. We captured one named Nathaniel Enloe, and I knew that he was an Enloe as soon as I saw him, and he knew me although we had never seen or heard of each other before. We shook hands whilst both Fed. and Confed. looked on, but all noted the resemblance. He claimed he and Jim both to be cousins of my father. There are also two doctors I think living in Nash- ville, Tenn., and there used to be a Presbyte- rian preacher who lived in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Our folks of the old stock were all Presbyte- rians. The Abraham spoken of, I think by J. P\, was the father of Wesley, a grandfather 305 of J. F., that would make Gilbert J. F.'s great- grandfather, provided Abraham was Gilbert's son, which I think he was. I have written to South Carolina and North Carolina both for information, and when I get it I will let you know, but I guess that you have no doubt noticed the marked personal resemblance of "Abraham Lincoln and the Enloes. Most of the Enloes are tall, raw-boned, high cheeks and immense ears, all but me, and I got mine froze off during the war. We are all of Southern origin, I on both sides ; my father having been born in South Carolina and my mother, who was a Bradford, a sister of Judge James Bradford, was born in Kentucky. She was a cousin of the Mayor Bradford that was slain after capture of the Rebs at Fort Dillon in 1863. If, at sometime when you are mak- ing a business trip to St. Louis, you will let me know, I will meet you there if I can and get better acquainted with you. I think that I have given you the facts as I understood them, so I will close. Hoping to hear from you often, I remain as ever, Sam G. Enloe. 3o6 " It appears that the two original brothers were pioneers of South Carolina about the year 1750 where they both died. Their de- scendants being among the earlier settlers of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Texas, and California, some drifting to Georgia and Wisconsin. They were possessed of more than ordinary physical ability, honesty, determination and endurance. Physical ability, determination and endurance are attested by the prompt manner in which they pushed forward into new country, facing strange and partially civ- ilized people, and poverty. As to honesty, the assertion goes with my convictions. Joel and Benjamin Enloe, spoken of by Sagu G., in his letter as being at the Legislature of Illinois prior to i860, were the sons of Benja- min. Benjamin was the old half brother of Isaac and James, our grandfathers. Isaac and James grew up wilh Joel and Ben and their brothers. I have often heard my grandfather talk about Joel's fights in Kentucky and Tennessee. We knew that Ben had located in Illinois but 307 • did not know what had become of Joel until Sam G. related the characteristics of Joel and Ben of Illinois. Hence, I take it, they are the same people. These letters cover the ground in a way, and I trust they will be of interest to you. Changes are always occurring as time rolls on. But so slight in this case with our family that the mention of the same would be of little inter- est, to you. My family now consist of Loyce, age ii, Ada 9, David 7, Justin 5, Robert and Roscoe (twins), age 3 years. Brother John is now located in Southeast Missouri, at Greenville, Wayne county. Have been feeling duty bound to write you on this subject for quite a while, but busy pro- fessionally, and dreading the task, anyway, I have deferred it from time to time. This leaves all well. With kindest regards I remain, yours truly, I. N. Enloe. THE ENP. ^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011 933 149 3 m ill m 11 wmm i! i r Mm if' !!!