Lincoln 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
'•in* 
 
 THE HOOSIER YOUTH 
 
 UTILE KNOWN BOYHOOD ADVENTURES 
 
 ABRAHAM) LINCOLN 
 
The cover portrait displays Manship's 
 heroic bronze statue of Abraham 
 Lincoln as a Hoosier youth. 
 
 Symbols used with the statue include 
 an ax, emphasizing the hard manual 
 labor which contributed to Lincoln's 
 great strength; a book, typifying his 
 intellectual advancement ; a dog, sug- 
 gesting through association Lincoln's 
 broad human sympathy. 
 
 The statue occupies the central area 
 on the plaza in front of The Lincoln 
 National Life Insurance Company 
 building at Fort Wayne, Indiana. 
 
 Copyright, 1940 
 
 The Lincoln National 
 
 Life Insurance 
 
 Company 
 
°I13^LG5 Lincoln 
 
 Little Known Boyhood Adventures 
 
 of 
 Abraham Lincoln 
 
 By Louis A. Warren, Utt. D. 
 
 Historian, The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company 
 Director, The Lincoln National Life Foundation 
 
 ^Jke ^rroosier UJouln 
 
 THE stones of Abraham Lincoln's humble 
 birth and childhood in Kentucky, his experi- 
 ences as a prairie lawyer in Illinois, his freeing of 
 the slaves and the saving of the Union are episodes 
 in his life well known to every American youth. The adventures 
 of Lincoln during his boyhood days in Indiana where he spent 
 fourteen years, one quarter of his whole life, have not been em- 
 phasized in comparison to their intense interest and very great 
 importance in his life's story. When Lincoln arrived in Indiana 
 from Kentucky he was a small lad but seven years old; when he 
 drove his father's oxen, hitched to a covered wagon, from Indiana 
 to Illinois, at the time of the family migration, he had reached the 
 age of twenty-one and was six feet four inches tall. 
 
 A friend who knew Lincoln well talked with him about his early 
 life in Indiana and claimed, "There was nothing sad nor pinched, 
 and nothing of want, and no allusions to want, in any part of it. 
 Lincoln's own description of his youth was that of a joyous, happy 
 boyhood." If we would know the story of Abraham Lincoln we 
 must not omit the little known boyhood adventures in the Hoosier 
 State. 
 
The birthday of Abraham Lincoln 
 falls within the Boy Scout Anniver- 
 sary Week observed annually in rec- 
 ognition of the establishment of the 
 movement in America. On the cover 
 of the Scout Handbook there is an 
 embossed profile of Lincoln. In the 
 chapter on "Citizencraft" there ap- 
 pears a part of Lincoln's Second In- 
 augural Address with this comment 
 about him: "great hearted, humble 
 as the log cabin of his birth, majestic in his simplicity, universal in 
 his sympathy." The life of this national hero should make a tre- 
 mendous appeal to every American boy. Each year on February 12, 
 thousands of Scouts make pilgrimages to Lincoln shrines and pay 
 tribute to the memory of the martyred President. 
 
 Although Abraham Lincoln was born one hundred years before 
 the origin of the Boy Scout movement, his boyhood home offered 
 an ideal environment for his advancement in those objectives now 
 encouraged by merit badge recognition. There cannot be found 
 among our American heroes one who in boyhood and manhood 
 measured up to the Twelve Scout Laws to a greater degree of 
 perfection than Lincoln. It is his living out in every detail the ob- 
 jectives of the Scout Oath, however, that especially commends him 
 to the American boy. He was throughout life "physically strong, 
 mentally awake, and morally straight." 
 
 utnt /M f~> 99 
 
 /-^nuAicaliu strong. 
 
 LOG cabin homes in the forests which stood on buffalo trails 
 and later on Indian warpaths were ideal dwelling places for 
 a boy's paradise. In describing the playground of his early days 
 Lincoln said, "It was a wild region with many bears and other wild 
 animals still in the woods." The outdoor environment and the tasks 
 of the pioneer combined to give boys on the frontiers rugged frames, 
 heavily muscled. 
 
 It is not strange that Abraham Lincoln built up a strong body, 
 since he started as a very small boy to wield an ax in the great 
 forest. Here is his own story about his beginning as a railsplitter. 
 He said his father "settled in an unbroken forest, and the clearing 
 
away of surplus wood was the great task ahead." He continued 
 that although he was only eight, he was large for his age, and had 
 an ax put into his hands at once; and from that time till within 
 his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most 
 useful instrument. 
 
 Athletically, Lincoln might be called the Ail-American Presi- 
 dent. He was the strongest, the tallest, and the most successful 
 in athletic competition of all of our Chief Executives. Undoubtedly 
 inspired by the stories of Washington's youthful activities as a boy, 
 Lincoln became the community champion in all those contests 
 wherein a boy desires to excel. 
 
 To be strong was a necessary qualification of an athlete in the 
 wilderness, as most of the competitive contests were based on 
 strength, skill having little to do with the primitive sports o£ that 
 day. Throwing a mall or heavy mallet backward over one's head 
 or tossing a heavy crowbar called for more strength but less skill 
 than the hammer throw or javelin contests in modern sports. Driv- 
 ing an ax head into a stump was an event in which Lincoln espe- 
 cially excelled. William Wood, a neighbor of the Lincolns said, 
 "Abraham Lincoln could sink an ax deeper into wood than any 
 man I ever saw." 
 
 As might be expected, lifting heavy weights was another out- 
 standing pioneer contest. There are many remarkable stories told 
 about Lincoln's great strength. Mr. Richardson, a neighbor, re- 
 called that on one occasion he saw Lincoln lift and move some dis- 
 tance "a chicken house made of poles, pinned together and cov- 
 ered, that weighed at least six hundred pounds, if not more." At 
 another time Lincoln observed three or four men placing sticks 
 under some huge posts to make them more easily lifted and carried, 
 whereupon he shouldered the posts 
 single-handed and deposited them at 
 the place where they were to be used. 
 
 When Abraham was still a youth, • 
 he began to take on all comers in 
 wrestling matches, and soon was so 
 proficient that when he reached the 
 Illinois country at twenty-one years 
 of age, he offered to the prairie strong 
 
 men plenty of competition for wres- ^i—jSL ~^%-J *^ i 
 
 tling honors. Bill Needham, champion 
 
of Coles County, Illinois, became very angry because Lincoln threw 
 him so easily. Nearly every boy has heard of Lincoln's victory over 
 Duff Armstrong, the Clary Grove ruffian. 
 
 How Lincoln's great strength served him to advantage on one oc- 
 casion is illustrated by a story he told about an incident which oc- 
 curred on the Mississippi River. He said that when he was nineteen, 
 still residing in Indiana, he made his first trip upon a flatboat to New 
 Orleans. He was a hired hand merely, and he and a son of the owner, 
 without other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the 
 "cargo-load," as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger 
 and trade along the sugar-coast; and one night they were attacked 
 by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt 
 some in the melee, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the 
 boat, and then "cut cable," "weighed anchor," and left. 
 
 Lincoln's superb physical power was not used to bully his weaker 
 associates, but even as a lad it was his appeal for fair play that did 
 much to make him the recognized leader of the boys in his com- 
 munity. One who knew him well has said: "He was a strong 
 athletic boy, good natured, and ready to out-run, out-jump, and 
 out-wrestle or out-lift anybody in the neighborhood." 
 
 ff/entaliu ^rfwane 
 
 y 
 
 LITTLE emphasis was placed on formal schooling in the wilder- 
 ness at the time Lincoln was growing up, and he said to a 
 biographer, "There were some schools, so called, but no qualification 
 was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin', and cipherin' ' 
 to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin 
 happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a 
 wizard." Yet Lincoln attended three log cabin schools in Indiana 
 
 and was taught successively by 
 Andrew Crawford, James Swaney, 
 and Azel W. Dorsey. 
 
 Lincoln had what we might call 
 a common school education for 
 the western country in that day 
 and time. Most certainly he was 
 "mentally awake" and his step- 
 mother tells us that "He was dili- 
 gent for knowledge, wished to 
 
know, and if pains and labor would get it he 
 was sure to get it." With respect to his mem- 
 ory she said, "Abe could easily learn and long 
 remember, and when he did learn anything 
 he learned it well and thoroughly. What he 
 thus learned, he stored away in his memory, 
 which was extremely good." 
 
 It is indeed fortunate that Lincoln chose 
 to memorize worth-while pieces of prose and 
 poetry. The passages which impressed him 
 most he would write down on scraps of paper. 
 
 Later he obtained an old blank book in which he preserved the pieces 
 which he liked best. A small book called Scott's Lessons in Elocution 
 encouraged him to study how to speak in public, and he practiced his 
 recitations standing on a stump with a group of children about him 
 for an audience. His early appreciation of good literature and his 
 training in making speeches indirectly helped prepare him to write 
 and deliver in later years the famous address at Gettysburg. 
 
 While his stepmother tells us that "Abe read all the books he 
 could lay his hands on," he was not blind to the important lessons 
 which nature had to teach him. Not far away John J. Audubon 
 was making his famous studies of American bird life which he 
 found in great abundance in Southern Indiana. In Northern In- 
 diana John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) was covering the western 
 country with his fruit trees. Everywhere there was a profusion of 
 flowers. The great rivers had a special appeal to Lincoln and he 
 became an expert authority on questions relating to navigation. He 
 was granted a patent later in life for a device to be used on boats 
 in shallow water. 
 
 There is no finer example of his mental alertness than his 
 progress in mathematics, after finishing his formal schooling, when 
 most of his figuring was done with charcoal on pieces of wood 
 which served as a slate. First he studied algebra, self taught, then 
 a position as a surveyor was offered to him for which he immedi- 
 ately qualified by conquering higher mathematics; and he states 
 in an autobiographical sketch that he mastered Euclid (plain and 
 spherical trigonometry) after he was a grown man. We may not 
 wonder that one with a mind so well trained could write an 
 address like the Second Inaugural which the London Times called 
 "The greatest state paper of the century." 
 
No one has given us a better picture of 
 Lincoln's "mental awakeness" than Bishop 
 Simpson who gave the funeral oration at 
 the time of Lincoln's burial in Springfield, 
 Illinois. He said: "If you ask me on what 
 mental characteristic his greatness rested, 
 I answer, on a quick and ready perception 
 of facts; on memory unusually tenacious 
 and retentive; and on a logical turn of mind, 
 which followed sternly and unwaveringly 
 every link in the chain of thought on every subject he was called to 
 investigate. . . . He gained this power by the close study of geometry, 
 and by a determination to perceive the truth in all its relations and 
 simplicity, and, when found, to utter it." 
 
 Every American boy is under lasting obligation to Abraham Lin- 
 coln for his ability as a statesman to solve the intricate problems of 
 his day, as well as his guarantee of the preservation of the Union which 
 most of his advisers were willing to sacrifice. It is to Abraham Lincoln 
 more than to any other individual that the American boy owes his 
 unlimited opportunities in a free and peaceful country. 
 
 Jy/orailp ^Iraiyhl 
 
 OVERSHADOWING Lincoln's great strength and keen intel- 
 lect was a genius for character building which matured into a 
 lofty moral code which he followed throughout life. He lived as 
 a youth in a day when it was not easy to be "morally straight," 
 but he bravely refused to form any injurious habit which would 
 hinder his usefulness. 
 
 The stepmother with whom Abraham Lincoln lived from the 
 time he was eleven years old until he became twenty-one has left 
 this statement about his conduct: "He never drank whiskey or 
 other strong drink, was temperate in all things. ... He never 
 told me a lie in his life, never evaded, never quarrelled. . . He 
 never swore or used profane language in my presence or in others 
 that I ever remember." She might have added to her testimony the 
 fact that Lincoln never used tobacco in any form, and all of these 
 statements would stand true for his whole life as well as his youth. 
 Abraham Lincoln's character is not to be judged primarily by 
 the absence of certain harmful habits in his life, but by a positive 
 
and purposeful attitude which he revealed. His stepmother has 
 also made this statement about Abraham's early years: "He was 
 kind to everybody and to everything and always accommodated 
 others if he could." Apparently it became natural for him to do 
 good turns daily and be generally helpful. 
 
 As a very small boy Abraham Lincoln seemed to have learned 
 from his own mother important lessons about the question of right 
 and wrong principles. This early teaching had very much to do 
 with the attitude which he finally took on the question on slavery. 
 In writing to a friend in Kentucky in later years he stated that "he 
 could not remember the day when he did not think slavery to be 
 wrong." It was the notion which Lincoln had, even as a boy, about the 
 wrongs of slavery that finally caused him to become the emancipator 
 of four million enslaved men. He has become known as the great lover 
 of mankind, a humanitarian with a burning passion that the right 
 might prevail. 
 
 Possibly the moral trait that has been more often associated with 
 Abraham Lincoln than any of his many other virtues is his honesty. 
 We have come to know him as "Honest Abe." His reputation for 
 honesty as a youth followed him through all those early years in 
 Illinois when he was struggling with poverty. As a storekeeper, 
 on one occasion he had taken six and a quarter cents too much 
 from one of his customers, and, after the store was closed that 
 evening, he walked several miles to repay the one he had short- 
 changed. On another occasion he weighed some goods in the eve- 
 ning, and in the morning discovered he had placed the wrong weight 
 on the scales. This time he shut up shop and went immediately to 
 deliver the rest of the goods due the customer. 
 
 Sometimes we may learn the true character of a man by the 
 way he expresses himself in his correspondence. Abraham Lincoln 
 had a young friend named George Latham, a 
 schoolmate of his own son, Robert Lincoln. 
 George had failed in his college entrance exam- 
 ination, and Mr. Lincoln wrote him this letter 
 of encouragement: 
 
 Springfield, Ills. July 22, 1860. 
 My dear George 
 
 I have scarcely felt greater pain in my life 
 than on learning yesterday from Bob's letter, 
 that you had failed to enter Harvard University. 
 
And yet there is very little in it, if you will allow no feeling of dis- 
 couragement to seize, and prey upon you. It is a certain truth, that 
 you can enter, and graduate in, Harvard University; and having 
 made the attempt, you must succeed in it. "Must" is the word. 
 
 I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature 
 age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you reso- 
 lutely determine, that you will not. . . . 
 
 In your temporary failure there is no evidence that you may not 
 yet be a better scholar, and a more successful man in the great 
 struggle of life, than many others, who have entered College more 
 easily. 
 
 Again I say let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and 
 in the end you are sure to succeed. 
 
 With more than a common interest I subscribe myself 
 
 Very truly your friend, 
 
 A. Lincoln. 
 
 cJLlncoln f-^i 
 
 oem 
 
 The poem entitled "The Bear Hunt," 
 printed on the opposite page, was written 
 by Abraham Lincoln upon his return from 
 a visit to his old Indiana home which 
 he had not seen for fourteen years. The 
 memory of a chase in which he participated 
 when a boy, was recalled and put in verse. 
 The usual moral in primitive poetry is in- 
 troduced through a small worthless dog 
 called in pioneer days a "fice." 
 
The Bear Hunt 
 
 By Abraham Lincoln 
 
 A wild-bear chace, didst never see? 
 
 Then hast thou lived in vain — 
 Thy richest bump of glorious glee, 
 
 Lies desert in thy brain. 
 
 When first my father settled here, 
 
 'Twas then the frontier line; 
 The panther's scream, filled night with fear 
 
 And bears prayed on the swine — 
 
 But wo for Bruin's short lived fun, 
 
 When rose the squealing cry; 
 Now man and horse, with dog and gun, 
 
 For vengeance, at him fly — 
 
 A sound of danger strikes his ear, 
 
 He gives the breeze a snuff; 
 Away he bounds, with little fear, 
 
 And seeks the tangled rough. 
 
 On press his foes, and reach the ground, 
 Where's left his half munched meal; 
 
 The dogs, in circles, scent around. 
 And find this fresh made trail — 
 
 With instant cry away they dash, 
 
 And men as fast pursue; 
 O'er logs they leap, through water splash, 
 
 And shout the brisk halloo — 
 Now to elude the eager pack, 
 
 Bear shuns the open ground; 
 Through matted vines, he shapes his track 
 
 And runs it, round and round — 
 
 The tall fleei cur, with deep-mouthed voice, 
 
 Now speeds him, as the wind; 
 While half-grown pup, and short-legged fice. 
 
 Are yelping far behind 
 
 And fresh recruits are dropping in 
 
 To join the merry corps; 
 With yelp and yell — a mingled din — 
 
 The woods are in a roar — 
 
 And round, and round the chace now goes, 
 
 The world's alive with fun; 
 Nick Carter's horse his rider throws 
 
 And Mose Hill drops his gun — 
 
 Now sorely pressed, bear glances back, 
 
 And lolls his tired tongue 
 When is, to force him from his track, 
 
 An ambush on him sprung — 
 
 Across the glade he sweeps for flight, 
 
 And fully is in view — 
 The dogs, new-fired, by the sight, 
 
 Their cry, and speed, renew? — 
 
 The foremost ones, now reach his rear. 
 
 He turns, they dash away; 
 And circling now, the wrathful bear, 
 
 They have him full at bay — 
 
 At top of speed, the horsemen come, 
 
 All screaming in a row — 
 "Whoop! Take him Tiger— Seize him Drum* 
 Bang-bang — the rifles go — 
 
 And furious now, the dogs he tears, 
 
 And crushes in his ire — 
 Wheels right and left, and upward rears, 
 
 With eyes of burning fire — 
 
 But leaden death is at his heart, 
 
 Vain all the strength he plies, 
 And, spouting blood, from every part, 
 
 He reels, and sinks, and dies — 
 
 And now a dinsome clamor rose. 
 
 'Bout who should have his skin; 
 Who first draws blood, each hunter knows, 
 
 This prize must always win — 
 
 But who did this, and how to trace 
 
 What's true from what's a lie, 
 Like lawyers, in a murder case 
 
 They stoutly argufy. 
 
 Aforesaid fice, of blustering mood, 
 
 Behind, and quite forgot, 
 Just now emerging from the wood, 
 
 Arrives upon the spot — - 
 
 With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair — 
 
 Brim full of spunk and wrath. 
 He growls, and seizes on dead bear, 
 
 And shakes for lile and death — 
 
 And swells as if his skin would tear. 
 
 And growls and shakes again; 
 And swears, as plain as dog can swear, 
 
 That he has won the skin — 
 
 Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee — 
 
 Nor mind, that not a few 
 Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be. 
 
 Conceited quite as you. 
 
Presented by 
 
 THE LINCOLN NATIONAL LIFE 
 
 INSURANCE COMPANY 
 
 Fort Wayne, Indiana 
 
 Form 2907 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 973.7L63C2W253L C001 
 
 LITTLE KNOWN BOYHOOD ADVENTURES OF ABRAH 
 
 3 0112 031803684