Chapter I: Preface

Abraham Lincoln has become the typical character of American institutions, and it is the purpose of this book, which is a true picture in a framework of fiction, to show how that character, which so commanded the hearts and the confidence of men, was formed. He who in youth unselfishly seeks the good of others, without fear or favor, may be ridiculed, but he makes for himself a character fit to govern others, and one that the people will one day need and honor. The secret of Abraham Lincoln's success was the "faith that right makes might." This principle the book seeks by abundant story-telling to illustrate and make clear.

In this volume, as in the "Log School-House on the Columbia," the adventures of a pioneer school-master are made to represent the early history of a newly settled country. The "Log School-House on the Columbia" gave a view of the early history of Oregon and Washington. This volume collects many of the Indian romances and cabin tales of the early settlers of Illinois, and pictures the hardships and manly struggles of one who by force of early character made himself the greatest of representative Americans.

The character of the Dunkard, or Tunker, as a wandering school-master, may be new to many readers. Such missionaries of the forests and prairies have now for the most part disappeared, but they did a useful work among the pioneer settlements on the Ohio and Illinois Rivers. In this case we present him as a disciple of Pestalozzi and a friend of Froebel, and as one who brings the German methods of story-telling into his work.

"Was there ever so good an Indian as Umatilla?" asks an accomplished reviewer of the "Log School-House on the Columbia." The chief whose heroic death in the grave of his son is recorded in that volume did not receive the full measure of credit for his devotion, for he was really buried _alive_ in the grave of his boy. A like question may be asked in regard to the father of Waubeno in this volume. We give the story very much as Black Hawk himself related it. In Drake's History of the Indians we find it related in the following manner:

"It is related by Black Hawk, in his Life, that some time before the War of 1812 one of the Indians had killed a Frenchman at Prairie des Chiens. 'The British soon after took him prisoner, and said they would shoot him next day. His family were encamped a short distance below the mouth of the Ouisconsin. He begged permission to go and see them that night, as he was _to die the next day_. They permitted him to go, after promising to return the next morning by sunrise. He visited his family, which consisted of a wife and six children. I can not describe their meeting and parting to be understood by the whites, as it appears that their feelings are acted upon by certain rules laid down by their _preachers_!--while ours are governed only by the monitor within us. He parted from his wife and children, hurried through the prairie to the fort, and arrived in time. The soldiers were ready, and immediately _marched out and shot him down_!' If this were not cold-blooded, deliberate murder on the part of the whites I have no conception of what constitutes that crime. What were the circumstances of the murder we are not informed; but whatever they may have been, they can not excuse a still greater barbarity."

It belongs, like the story of so-called Umatilla in the "Log School-House on the Columbia," to a series of great legends of Indian character which the poet's pen and the artist's brush would do well to perpetuate. The examples of Indians who have valued honor more than life are many, and it is a pleasing duty to picture such scenes of native worth, as true to the spirit of the past.

We have in this volume, as in the former book, freely mingled history, tradition, and fiction, but we believe that we have in no case been untrue to the fact and spirit of the times we picture, and we have employed fiction chiefly as a framework to bring what is real more vividly into view. We have employed the interpretive imagination merely for narrative purposes. Nearly all that has distinctive worth in the volume is substantially true to history, tradition, and the general spirit of old times in the Illinois, the Sangamon, and the Chicago; to the character of the "jolly old pedagogue long ago"; and to that marvelous man who accepted in youth the lesson of lessons, that "right makes might."

28 WORCHESTER STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I.--INTRODUCED 1

II.--THOMAS LINCOLN'S FAMILY STORIES 17

III.--THE OLD BLACKSMITH'S SHOP AND THE MERRY STORY-TELLERS 33

IV.--A BOY WITH A HEART 55

V.--JASPER COBBLES FOR AUNT OLIVE.--HER QUEER STORIES 62

VI.--JASPER GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF HIS VISIT TO BLACK HAWK.--AUNT INDIANA'S WIG 75

VII.--THE EXAMINATION AT CRAWFORD'S SCHOOL 87

VIII.--THE PARABLE PREACHES IN THE WILDERNESS 100

IX.--AUNT INDIANA'S PROPHECIES 108

X.--THE INDIAN RUNNER 115

XI.--THE CABIN NEAR CHICAGO 122

XII.--THE WHITE INDIAN OF CHICAGO 133

XIII.--LAFAYETTE AT KASKASKIA.--THE STATELY MINUET 140

XIV.--WAUBENO AND YOUNG LINCOLN 156

XV.--THE DEBATING SCHOOL 166

XVI.--THE SCHOOL THAT MADE LINCOLN PRESIDENT 177

XVII.--THOMAS LINCOLN MOVES 184

XVIII.--MAIN-POGUE 196

XIX.--THE FOREST COLLEGE 202

XX.--MAKING LINCOLN A "SON OF MALTA" 214

XXI.--PRAIRIE ISLAND 218

XXII.--THE INDIAN PLOT 229

XXIII.--FOR LINCOLN'S SAKE 236

XXIV.--"OUR LINCOLN IS THE MAN" 251

XXV.--AT THE LAST 265

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

The rescue _Frontispiece_

The Tunker school-master's class in manners 14

Lines written by Lincoln on the leaf of his school-book 22

Story-telling at the smithy 35

The home of Abraham Lincoln when in his tenth year 55

Aunt Olive's wedding 68

Abraham as a peace-maker 90

Black Hawk tells the story of Waubeno 118

A queer place to write poetry 160

Sarah Bush Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's step-mother 217

The approach of the mysterious Indian 240

The Lincoln family record 250

Abraham Lincoln, the man 262

IN THE BOYHOOD OF LINCOLN.