To supplement his meager schooling, young Lincoln educated himself. He practiced writing the letters of the alphabet whenever and however he could, carving letters on slabs of wood, tree trunks, even on the stools and table in his family’s cabin. When he did not have charcoal to hand, he wrote in the dust, in sand, or in snow. Dennis Hanks claimed credit for teaching his cousin to write, a boast that may be justified inasmuch as Dennis, ten years older than Abe, could write. As Lincoln’s writing skill improved, and it was learned that he was conducting the correspondence for his own family, neighbors came to regard him as “a marvel of learning” and called upon him to write for them, too. John Locke Scripps believed that Lincoln’s greatest asset was not so much his skill as a stenographer as it was “his ability to express the wishes and feelings of those for whom he wrote in clear and forcible language.”80 Years later Lincoln told a friend “that the way he learned to write so well & so distinctly & precisely was that many people who Came with them from Ky & different sections after they moved” to Indiana employed him as an amanuensis, which “sharpened” his “perceptions” and taught him “to see other people[’s] thoughts and feelings and ideas by writing their friendly confidential letters.”81 He also drafted legal documents, including a contract between his stepbrother and a man who hired Johnston to run a still house. (Lincoln himself worked at that facility in the winter of 1829–1830.)
In addition to writing for his neighbors, Lincoln also read to them. He regularly visited William Wood’s house to read newspapers aloud for the edification of the unlettered. He had a knack for making his listeners understand what they heard. When in a puckish mood, he would often invent stories while pretending to read from the paper he was holding.
Sometimes Lincoln memorized items in the press. John Romine recalled that “Abe borrowed a newspaper from me which contained a long editorial about Thomas Jefferson, and read the entire paper by firelight. The next morning he returned the paper, and it seemed to me that he could repeat every word in that editorial, and not only that [—] he could recount all the news items, as well as tell all about the advertisements.”82 J. Rowan Herndon said Lincoln “had the Best memory of any man I Ever Knew,” for he “Never forgot any thing he Read.”83
Young Lincoln admired Lindley Murray’s English Reader, an anthology of poetry and prose that he called “the greatest and most useful book that could be put in the hands of a child at school.”84 It contained some antislavery sentiments, such as these lines by the eighteenth-century poet, William Cowper:
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn’d.
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
(Lincoln would later famously write: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”)85
Lincoln’s other schoolbooks included Thomas Dilworth’s New Guide to the English Tongue, Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book, and Asa Rhoads’s American Spelling Book. In addition to his family Bible, Lincoln read volumes borrowed from neighbors, including Josiah Crawford, William Jones, Thomas Turnham, and John Pitcher. Among these works were The Arabian Nights, Aesop’s Fables, The Kentucky Preceptor, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, James Barclay’s English dictionary, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, James Riley’s Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, William Grimshaw’s History of the United States, a biography of Henry Clay, Mason Weems’s life of George Washington, and William Scott’s Lessons in Elocution. (Curiously, the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin does not seem to have been among the books read by Lincoln, who was to become as famous a representative of the self-made-man ethic as Franklin himself.)
It is not possible to say precisely what Lincoln derived from these volumes. His views on slavery may have been affected by the Scott anthology, which contained Laurence Sterne’s indictment of human bondage: “Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery! still, thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands, in all ages, have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.”86 Scott also included Cowper’s poem, “Cruelty to Brutes Censured,” which may have had a special appeal to the young Lincoln. Robinson Crusoe perhaps reinforced his sense of irony and fatalism.
In the late 1820s, Lincoln began reading newspapers, especially the New York Telescope, the Washington National Intelligencer, and the Louisville Journal, papers that helped develop his interest in politics. He originally supported Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party but soon switched his allegiance to the National Republicans, whose leader, Henry Clay, would found the Whig Party in the 1830s. Influencing this decision was a prosperous merchant, William Jones, who admired Clay so much that when his hero lost the 1844 presidential election, Jones was unable to attend to business for days. Jones employed young Lincoln in his store and served as a friendly mentor to him. Lincoln hung around the store, where he could read the Louisville Journal and discuss politics. In all likelihood, Lincoln’s preference for the National Republicans grew from his aversion to the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian celebration of agrarianism and negative government. Eager to escape rural backwardness, he probably associated the Democrats with shiftless frontiersmen like his Democratic father, while the National Republicans represented enterprising lawyers and merchants like Jones.
When Lincoln was about 14 years old, hearing that David Ramsay’s biography of the first president offered an account of Washington superior to Mason Weems’s, he promptly borrowed a copy of the Ramsay book from Josiah Crawford and read it avidly. Before he could return it, however, the volume inadvertently got soaked by rain that poured into the Lincoln cabin one night. When he told Crawford what had happened and offered to pay for the book, Crawford instead suggested that the lad cut the tops from a field of corn, which he did over the course of three days. Lincoln believed that Crawford, a tightfisted man known for his pettiness in dealing with neighbors, had made an excessive demand, and retaliated by composing satirical verses ridiculing Crawford unmercifully.
Lincoln did not rely solely on the printed word or the classroom for his education; he also queried travelers who stopped at Jones’s store. In addition, with Dennis Hanks, Nathaniel Grigsby, and other friends, Lincoln attended political meetings and discussed issues of the day endlessly. Lincoln insisted on thoroughly digesting whatever he read or heard. His stepmother recollected that “Abe, when old folks were at our house, was a silent & attentive observer—never speaking or asking questions till they were gone and then he must understand Every thing—even to the smallest thing—Minutely & Exactly.” He “would then repeat it over to himself again & again—sometimes in one form and then in another & when it was fixed in his mind to suit him he became Easy and he never lost that fact or his understanding of it.” Occasionally, “he seemed pestered to give Expression to his ideas and got mad almost at one who couldn’t Explain plainly what he wanted to convey.”87
Lincoln never lost this desire to gain a clear understanding of whatever he read or heard. In 1860, he described one of his earliest recollections to a Connecticut clergyman: “I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I don’t think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, until I had put it in language plain enough,
as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me, for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north and bounded it south and bounded it east and bounded it west.”88 He rewrote the words of family guests to make his own prose more concise. When visitors came to the cabin, he would patiently listen to them talk. Employing a kind of shorthand, he jotted down their remarks and later went over them repeatedly, striking out extraneous words while retaining the substance and flavor of the conversations.
Religion
It is clear that Lincoln read the Bible, though how diligently he perused it is not recorded. In the 1850s he told an Illinois lawyer that his boyhood library consisted of “66 books of which he was very fond” (i.e., the Bible) and that he “studied it with great care.”89 Lincoln would probably have agreed with the historian who called the Bible “a whole literature, a library,” a collection of poems and short stories teaching “history, biography, biology, geography, philosophy, political science, psychology, hygiene, and sociology,” as well as “cosmogony, ethics, and theology,” and presenting “a worldly panorama” with “particulars so varied that it is hard to think of a domestic or social situation without a biblical example to match and turn to moral ends.”90
In his mature years Lincoln often referred to the Bible, which he described as “the richest source of pertinent quotations” and “the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.”91 Near the end of the Civil War he told Joshua Speed: “take all of this book [the Bible] upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man.”92 The Bible, journalist Noah Brooks reported, “was a very familiar study with the President, whole chapters of Isaiah, the New Testament, and the Psalms being fixed in his memory.” Lincoln, Brooks added, “would sometimes correct a misquotation of Scripture, giving generally the chapter and verse where it could be found. He liked the Old Testament best, and dwelt on the simple beauty of the historical books.”93 (Of the Psalms, he said: “they are the best, for I find in them something for every day in the week.”)94
Lincoln often cited the Old Testament. In discussing the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he alluded to the Book of Proverbs (25:11): “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”95 While pondering his future, he told a friend he would follow the advice of Moses: “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord”96 (Exodus 14:13). Responding to Stephen A. Douglas in 1852, he quoted Genesis 5:24: “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”97 Opening his campaign for the senate in 1858, Lincoln took a text from Ecclesiastes (9:4): “a living dog is better than a dead lion.”98 He made another biblical canine allusion when complaining about press criticism during the Civil War: “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” (Second Kings 8:13).99 He also alluded to a passage in Proverbs (30:10) dealing with servants: “Accuse not a servant to his master lest he curse thee and thou be found guilty.”100 In 1861, speaking in Philadelphia, he gave a condensed version of the following passage from the 135th psalm: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”101 When denouncing slavery, Lincoln would repeatedly cite God’s injunction to Adam: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19).102
Lincoln also liked the New Testament, frequently quoting the words of Jesus:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1)103
“Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offences come; but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh.” (Matthew 18:7)104
“Every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” (Matthew 12:25)105
“For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” (Matthew 24:28)106
“The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)107
“If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:31)108
“Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” (Matthew 7:12)109
“For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit.” (Luke 6:43–44)110
“They seek a sign, and no sign shall be given them.” (Luke 11:29)111
“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” (Matthew 12:34)112
“As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)113
Lincoln’s lecture on discoveries and inventions, delivered in the 1850s, contains more than thirty biblical references.
In his youth, Lincoln “didn[’]t read the Bible half as much as [is] said,” according to Dennis Hanks, who reported that “the Bible puzzled him, especially the miracles. He often asked me in the timber or sittin’ around the fireplace nights, to explain scripture.”114 Lincoln’s stepmother also testified that “Abe read the bible some, though not as much as [is] said: he sought more congenial books—suitable for his age.”115 (In 1860, Lincoln confessed to a Springfield minister: “I have read my Bible some, though not half as much as I ought.”)116 Sarah Bush Lincoln often entertained guests by having Abe read aloud from the Bible. On one such occasion, Abe evidently resented the assignment and began reading at a furious pace. When Mrs. Lincoln urged him to slow down, he defiantly sped up. In exasperation, she grabbed a broom and chased him out of the cabin, much to his relief. Another time he read aloud from the Book of Isaiah, playfully interpolating passages from Shakespeare.
Lincoln’s youthful attitude toward the Bible, as described by his stepmother and Dennis Hanks, may reflect disenchantment with the ignorant preachers and hypocritical churchgoers he observed both in Kentucky and at the Little Pigeon Baptist Church, with which his parents affiliated in 1823 but which Abe did not join. That congregation seethed with personal feuds, quarrels over the proper credentials for those who administered baptism, opposition to benevolent missionary work, and disputes over creeds. The primitive worship, heavy emphasis on arcane doctrinal matters, and ignorant and even drunken preachers probably repelled young Lincoln.
In The Hoosier Schoolmaster, the former circuit-riding minister Edward Eggleston portrayed hard-shell Baptist congregations in antebellum Indiana: “Their confession of faith is a caricature of Calvinism, and is expressed by their preachers about as follows: ‘Ef you’re elected, you’ll be saved; ef you a’n’t, you’ll be damned. God’ll take keer of his elect. It’s a sin to run Sunday-schools, or temp’rince s’cieties, or to send missionaries. You let God’s business alone. What is to be will be, and you can’t hender it.” These “prodigiously illiterate, and often vicious” fundamentalist parishioners sometimes had ministers who were “notorious drunkards” and who dragged “their sermons out sometimes for three hours at a stretch.”117
William E. Barton, a clergyman who wrote extensively about Lincoln, described the kind of services young Abe probably attended: “The [Baptist] preachers bellowed and spat and whined, and cultivated an artificial ‘holy tone’ and denounced the Methodists and blasphemed the Presbyterians and painted a hell whose horror even in the backwoods was an atrocity.” Barton speculated plausibly that before Lincoln reached the age of 28 he may not have encountered a Baptist preacher who acknowledged that the earth was round.118
After hearing sermons or speeches, Lincoln repeated them nearly verbatim to his friends, mimicking the gestures and accent of the speaker. Often he would return from church, mount a box in the middle of the cabin, and replicate the service. He would do the same outdoors, climbing on a stump and inviting his friends to hear him deliver sermons or political sp
eeches. Because this activity interfered with farmwork, Abe’s father frequently scolded him and made him quit. His stepsister Matilda remembered that sometimes she and Lincoln would conduct mock religious services at which she would lead the singing while “Abe would lead in prayer. Among his numerous supplications, he prayed God to put stockings on the chickens’ feet in winter.”119
A strain of irreverence remained with Lincoln all his life. He especially relished humorous stories about ignorant preachers, including one, which involved a Baptist minister in Indiana: “The meeting-house was in the woods and quite a distance from any other house. It was only used once a month. The preacher—an old line Baptist—was dressed in coarse linen pantaloons, and shirt of the same material. The pants, manufactured after the old fashion, with baggy legs and a flap in front, were made to attach to his frame without the aid of suspenders. A single button held his shirt in position, and that was at the collar. He rose up in the pulpit and with a loud voice announced his text thus: ‘I am the Christ, whom I shall represent today.’ About this time a little blue lizard ran up underneath his baggy pantaloons. The old preacher, not wishing to interrupt the steady flow of his sermon, slapped away on his legs, expecting to arrest the intruder; but his efforts were unavailing, and the little fellow kept on ascending higher and higher. Continuing the sermon, the preacher slyly loosened the central button which graced the waist-band of his pantaloons and with a kick off came that easy-fitting garment. But meanwhile Mr. Lizard had passed the equatorial line of waist-band and was calmly exploring that part of the preacher’s anatomy which lay underneath the back of his shirt. Things were now growing interesting, but the sermon was still grinding on. The next movement on the preacher’s part was for the collar button, and with one sweep of his arm off came the tow linen shirt. The congregation sat for an instant as if dazed; at length one old lady in the rear of the room rose up and glancing at the excited object in the pulpit, shouted at the top of her voice: ‘If you represent Christ then I’m done with the Bible.’ ”120
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 8
