Early life and career of Abraham Lincoln
[7] Lincoln felt that it was from this aristocratic grandfather that he had inherited "his power of analysis, his logic, his mental activity, his ambition, and all the qualities that distinguished him from the other members and descendants of the Hanks family.
According to historian William E. Barton, one of these rumors began circulating in 1861 "in various forms in several sections of the South" that Lincoln's biological father was Abraham Enloe, a resident of Rutherford County, North Carolina, who died in that same year.
Citing Chauncey Burr's Catechism, which references a "pamphlet by a western author adducing evidence", David J. Jacobson has suggested Lincoln was "part Negro",[16] but the claim is unproven.
[i] In Lincoln's response to Scripps, he summed up his early life in a quote from Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, as "the short and simple annals of the poor.
[30] In December 1808, Thomas, Nancy, and their daughter, Sarah, moved from Elizabethtown to the Sinking Spring farm, on Nolin Creek, near Hodgen's Mill, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
Thomas Lincoln leased 30 acres of the 230-acre Knob Creek farm owned by George Lindsey but the family was forced to leave it after others claimed a prior title to the land.
"[39] Historians support Lincoln's assertion that the two major reasons for the family's migration to Indiana were most likely due to the problem with securing land titles in Kentucky and the issue of slavery.
When the Lincoln family left Indiana for Illinois in March 1830, Thomas and his second wife, Sally, were members in good standing at the Little Pigeon Creek Baptist Church.
[81][82] In a September 1865 interview with William Herndon, Lincoln's stepmother described Abraham as a studious boy who read constantly, listened intently to others and had a deep interest in learning.
Lincoln read Aesop's Fables, the Bible, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and Parson Weems's The Life of Washington, as well as newspapers, hymnals, songbooks, math and spelling books, and other material.
By the time he was twenty-one, Lincoln had become "an able and eloquent orator";[101] however, some historians have argued his speaking style, figures of speech, and vocabulary remained unrefined, even as he entered national politics.
Lincoln, who was twenty-one years old at the time, helped his father build a log cabin and fences, clear 10 acres (40,000 m2) of land and put in a crop of corn.
[108] Although Sally Lincoln and his cousin, Dennis Hanks, maintained that Thomas loved and supported his son, the father-son relationship became strained after the family moved to Illinois.
Lincoln's humor, storytelling abilities, and physical strength fit the young, raucous element that included the so-called Clary's Grove boys, and his place among them was cemented after a wrestling match with a local champion, Jack Armstrong.
His performance in the club, along with his efficiency in managing the store, sawmill, and gristmill, in addition to his other efforts at self-improvement soon gained the attention of the town's leaders, such as Dr. John Allen, Mentor Graham, and James Rutledge.
[122] In February 1836 Lincoln stopped working as a surveyor,[125] and in March 1836, took the first step to becoming a practicing attorney when he applied to the clerk of the Sangamon County Court to register as a man of good and moral character.
As the second youngest legislator in this term, and one of thirty-six first-time attendees, Lincoln was primarily an observer, but his colleagues soon recognized his mastery of "the technical language of the law" and asked him to draft bills for them.
Lincoln favored raising the funds for these projects through the federal government's sale of public lands to eliminate interest expenses; otherwise, private capital should bear the cost alone.
He finally succeeded when the legislature accepted his proposal that the chosen city would be required to contribute $50,000 and 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land for construction of a new state capitol building—only Springfield could comfortably meet this financial demand.
He condemned "that lawless and mobocratic spirit ... which is already abroad in the land, and is spreading with rapid and fearful impetuosity, to the ultimate overthrow of every institution, or even moral principle, in which persons and property have hitherto found security.
Historian David Herbert Donald wrote that Logan taught him that "there was more to law than common sense and simple equity" and Lincoln's study began to focus on "procedures and precedents.
"[160] His written briefs, especially important in Illinois Supreme Court cases, were prepared in great detail with precedents noted that often went back to the origins of English common law.
[179] A story arose many years later that Lincoln had modified the almanac, but this was refuted by Abram Bergen, who had witnessed the trial as a young attorney and later served as a justice of the New Mexico territorial supreme court.
[181] In the winter of 1842–1843, with the strong encouragement of his wife, Lincoln decided to pursue election to the United States House of Representatives from the newly created Seventh Congressional District.
Campaigning in Illinois for most of 1844, Lincoln spoke out against the annexation of Texas (a potential slave territory), promoted national and state banks, and opposed a wave of nativism that would become a major political issue a decade later.
Lincoln and many other Whigs blamed the free soil Liberty Party for dividing the vote in New York, which allowed Polk to carry that state and achieve the majority in the electoral college.
Speaking of his actual campaign expenses, Lincoln noted, "I made the canvass on my own horse; my entertainment, being at the houses of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider which some farm-hands insisted I should treat them to."
[205] In January 1848 Lincoln was among the eighty-two Whigs who defeated eighty-one Democrats in a procedural vote on an amendment to send a routine resolution back to committee with instructions to add the words "a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States."
[206] Lincoln later damaged his political reputation with a speech in which he declared, "God of Heaven has forgotten to defend the weak and innocent, and permitted the strong band of murderers and demons from hell to kill men, women, and children, and lay waste and pillage the land of the just.
In Morgan County, Illinois, resolutions were adopted in fervent support of the war and in wrathful denunciation of the "treasonable assaults of guerrillas at home; party demagogues; slanderers of the President; defenders of the butchery at the Alamo; traducers of the heroism at San Jacinto".
