Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  During the weeks it took to build the boat, Lincoln impressed the villagers of Sangamotown with both his gawky appearance and his agreeable wit. John E. Roll, who helped with the boat project, described Lincoln as “an awful clumsy looking man,” with his “homespun suit … cowhide boots, with his trousers strapped down under them,” wearing “an old slouch wool hat” and a short coat that exposed several inches of suspenders whenever he bent over.5 Sometimes Lincoln would strip to the waist for more strenuous work, such as chopping notches and removing the resulting heavy blocks, with his pants rolled to the knees, shirt drenched with sweat, his frizzy hair combed only by his fingers. Caleb Carman, with whom Lincoln boarded, at first regarded him as “a Green horn,” and “a fool” because of his “bad Apperance.” A brief conversation persuaded Carman that his lodger was, in fact, “a very inte[l]ligent young man” who conversed often about books and politics.6 When comrades swore at him for refusing to play cards, Lincoln “didn’t swear back or even get mad,” but rather spent his leisure time reading. Among the books he perused were biographies of George Washington and Francis Marion (“the Swamp Fox”).7

  Lincoln’s personality and ability to tell a funny story made him a celebrity in Sangamotown. He was always “verry mer[r]y & full of fun,” Caleb Carman remembered.8 Lincoln struck Clark E. Carr as “the most comical and jocose of human beings, laughing with the same zest at his own jokes as at those of others.” Never, said Carr, “have I seen another who provoked so much mirth, and who entered into rollicking fun with such glee.” He “could make a cat laugh.”9 Sangamo townsmen would sit on a log as Lincoln regaled them with stories, and when he ended one in an unexpected fashion, they would laugh so hard they fell off. He was also perfectly willing to be the butt of his own jokes. One night at Carman’s house, a magician cooked eggs in the hats of several men. When asked for his headgear, Lincoln replied, “Mr the reason why I didn’t give you my hat before was out of respect to your Eggs—not care for my hat.”10 His hat became known as “Lincoln’s frying pan.”11

  Lincoln’s humor was distinctly crude, and his lifelong fondness for off-color stories became legendary. In 1859, when asked, “why do you not write out your stories & put them in a book,” Lincoln “drew himself up—fixed his face, as if a thousand dead carcusses … were Shooting all their stench into his nostrils, and Said ‘Such a book would Stink like a thousand privies.’ ”12 In Lincoln’s view, clean stories lacked fun. “Very nasty indeed,” is how Henry C. Whitney remembered Lincoln’s sense of humor.13 Albert Taylor Bledsoe deemed Lincoln “one of the most obscene men that ever lived.”14 But even those who disapproved sometimes could not help laughing. A New England–born lawyer who practiced with Lincoln in Illinois deplored his racy stories, yet he was frequently reduced to uncontrollable laughter because they were so funny.

  Lincoln and his friends were reticent about recording examples of his rough humor. Abner Y. Ellis, for example, told an interviewer, “Modesty and my Veneration for his Memory forbids me to relate” any racy Lincoln stories. Nonetheless, enough of Lincoln’s humor has survived to illustrate why his Sangamotown colleagues found him hilarious. Even the reticent Abner Ellis shared this Lincoln joke with William Herndon: “It appears that Shortly after we had pease with England Mr. [Ethan] Allen had occasion to visit England, and while their the English took Great pleasure in teasing him, and trying to Make fun of the Americans and General Washington in particular and one day they got a picture of General Washington, and hung it up in the Back House whare Mr. Allen Could see it and they finally asked Mr A if he saw that picture of his friend in the Back House. Mr Allen said no. but said he thought that it was a very appropriate [place] for an Englishman to Keep it[.] Why they asked. for said Mr. Allen their is Nothing that will Make an Englishman Shit So quick as the Sight of Genl Washington.”15

  Defecation was not the only bodily function that animated Lincoln’s jokes; flatulence would serve just as well, especially if the setup was richly detailed and the punch line held the sort of surprise that typified his humor. He told of a “man of audacity, quick witted, self-possessed, & equal to all occasions” who was asked to carve a turkey for a large party. “The men and women surrounded the table & the audacious man being chosen carver whetted his great carving knife with the steel and got down to business & commenced carving the turkey, but he expended too much force & let a fart—a loud fart so that all the people heard it distinctly. As a matter of course it shocked all terribly. A deep silence reigned. However the audacious man was cool & entirely self possessed; he was curiously & keenly watched by those who knew him well, they suspecting that he would recover in the end and acquit himself with glory. The man with a kind of sublime audacity, pulled off his coat, rolled up his sleeves—put his coat deliberately on a chair—spat on his hands—took his position at the head of the table—picked up the carving knife & whetted it again, never cracking a smile nor moving a muscle of his face. It now became a wonder in the minds of all the men & women how the fellow was to get out of his dilemma; he squared himself and said loudly & distinctly—‘Now by God I’ll see if I can’t cut up this turkey without farting.’ ”16

  Lincoln also poked fun at drunks. “When I was a little boy,” he once said, “I lived in the state of Kentucky, where drunke[n]ness was very co[m]mon on election days. At an election … in a village near where I lived, on a day when the weather was inclement and the roads exceedingly muddy, A toper named Bill got brutally drunk and staggered down a narrow alley where he layed himself down in the mud, and remained there until the dusk of the evening, at which time he recovered from his stupor. Finding himself very muddy, [he] immediately started for a pump (a public watering place on the street) to wash himself[.] On his way to the pump another drunken man was leaning over a horse post[;] this, Bill mistook for the pump and at once took hold of the arm of the man for the handle, the use of which set the occupant of the post to throwing up. Bill believing all was right put both hands under and gave himself a thorough washing. He then made his way to the grocery for something to drink. On entering the door one of his comrades exclaimed in a tone of surprise, Why Bill what in the world is the matter[?] Bill said in reply by G-d you ought to have seen me before I was washed.”17

  Lincoln enjoyed telling about a fellow “who had a great veneration for Revolutionary relics. He heard tha[t] an old lady … had a dress which she had worn in the Revolutionary War. He made a special visit to this lady and asked her if she could produce the dress as a satisfaction to his love of aged things. She obliged him by opening a drawer and bringing out the article in question. The enthusiastic person took up this dress and delivered an apostrophe to it, ‘Were you the dress,’ said he, ‘that this lady once young and blooming wore in the time of Washington? No doubt when you came home from the dress maker she kissed you as I do now!’ At this the relic hunter took the old dress and kissed it heartily. The practical old lady rather resented such foolishness over an old piece of wearing apparel and she said: ‘Stranger if you want to kiss something old you had better kiss my ass. It is sixteen years older than that dress.’ ”18

  Lincoln’s repertoire included bawdy songs, too. He regaled the boys at Sangamo-town with such tunes as “Old Old Suckey Blue Skin” and “The Woodpecker Stopping on the Hollow Beach Tree.”19

  Lincoln was not the only member of his family with a penchant for ribaldry. His uncle Mordecai was renowned for his ability to tell smutty stories. Abner Ellis traced Lincoln’s “Great passion For dirty Stories” to “his Early training by the Hanks Boys his Cousins.”20

  Lincoln favored stories that illustrated a point and disliked vulgarity for its own sake. William Herndon explained that even though “Lincoln’s jokes were vulgar—indecently so,” yet he “was not a dirty foul mouthed man by any means.” He “was raised among a peculiar people—an ignorant but good people—honest ones. Hence Mr Lincoln preferred jokes to fables or maxims as they, for his people, had the pith-point & force about them to make the point luminous—
clear—plain.”21 Leonard Swett reported that if “he told a good story that was.… outrageously low and dirty, he never seemed to see that part of it.… Almost any man that will tell a vulgar story, has got in a degree a vulgar mind, but it was not so with him.”22 Herndon recalled “a person who so far mistook Mr. Lincoln once as to tell a coarse story without purpose. During its recital Mr. Lincoln’s face worked impatiently. When the man had gone he said: ‘I had nearly put that fellow out of the office. He disgusts me.’ ”23

  In 1864 Lincoln told some White House visitors of a lawyer who “knew more stories and could tell them better than any one I ever knew. He was the life of the bar, and did more than any of us to make the dismal nights in a small county-court town pass off pleasantly.” But the man got religion and cleaned up his conversation, and ceased his dirty stories despite the efforts of his friends to draw him out. Finally, under duress, he reluctantly retold one of the bawdy tales for which he had been famous, “and it was a failure. No one laughed.” The fellow had omitted expletives and “hard swearing.” Lincoln remembered the man explaining, “as I have … only told you the plain story, it has failed to amuse you. The question is, gentlemen, whether the fault is in the story or in you.”24

  During his stay in Sangamotown, Lincoln made an impression with more than his stories and songs. After the flatboat was finished, the builders fashioned a canoe that two young men commandeered. In the middle of the raging river, the frail vessel capsized, putting the men in grave danger. Lincoln shouted to them to swim to a nearby tree and hang on. He then mounted a log, tied a rope around himself, and handed the end to some anxious spectators. Braving the current, he risked his own safety and brought the men ashore.

  In late April 1831, Lincoln, Hanks, Johnston, and Offutt set out for New Orleans with a boatload of bacon, pork, and corn. Years later Lincoln recalled, “I acted both as engineer and engine” on that trip.25 After only a few miles, the boat ran aground on a milldam at the village of New Salem. Townspeople watched curiously as Lincoln, who made a rather “Singular grotesque appearance,” jumped off the boat into the river and took charge.26 He and his crew transferred the cargo to another vessel to lighten the load. Then Lincoln borrowed an augur to drill a hole in the bow of the flatboat, which hung precariously over the dam. After the water drained out, he plugged the hole, freed the boat, and the journey continued. Struck by Lincoln’s ingenuity, Offutt declared that he would have a steamboat built to navigate the Sangamon, and “by thunder, she would have to go” because Lincoln would be the captain.27

  A few miles below New Salem the boat stopped to load some hogs, which balked when the crew tried to herd them aboard. When corn strewn on the gangplank failed to lure them, Offutt (in Lincoln’s words) “conceived the whim that he could sew up their eyes and drive them where he pleased.” “I Can’t sew the Eyes up,” Lincoln objected, so he held the hogs’ heads while Offutt stitched their eyes shut.28 The drastic scheme failed as the blind porkers stayed in the lot and simply went around in circles. Finally, the crew tied them up and hauled them aboard on carts.

  Soon after that seriocomic episode, Lincoln nearly abandoned the trip when Johnston and Hanks went on a spree farther down river at Beardstown. Offutt had to track Lincoln down and persuade him to continue. Thereafter, the journey was uneventful. Occasionally onlookers laughed at the strange craft with its unorthodox sail of plank and cloth.

  When they reached New Orleans in May, Lincoln was appalled, as he had been two years earlier, at the sight of slavery. John Hanks alleged that he and Lincoln “Saw Negroes Chained—maltreated—whipt & scourged.” Lincoln’s “heart bled,” though he “Said nothing much” and “was silent from feeling—was Sad—looked bad—felt bad—was thoughtful & abstracted.” Hanks maintained that “it was on this trip that he formed his opinions of Slavery; it ran its iron in him then & there—May, 1831. I have heard him say—often & often.”29 To a Lincoln biographer, Herndon reported John Hanks’s recollections of the New Orleans episode: “He [Lincoln] saw a slave, a beautiful mulatto girl, sold at auction. She was felt over, pinched, trotted around to show to bidders that said article was sound, etc. Lincoln walked away from the sad, inhuman scene with a deep feeling of unsmotherable hate.… John Hanks, who was two or three times examined by me, told me the above facts about the negro girl.… There is no doubt about this.”30 Historians doubt Hanks’s assertion, since Lincoln stated that Hanks did not proceed all the way to New Orleans but “had turned back from St. Louis.”31 It is possible that Hanks reported accurately what Lincoln told him at a later time, rather than what he saw with his own eyes. It is also possible that Lincoln’s memory was faulty. Herndon alleged that Lincoln often related this story, and it squares with the reminiscences of Allen Gentry’s wife about Lincoln’s remarks made during his first New Orleans trip. Moreover, Caleb Carman recalled that Lincoln “was opposed to Slavery & said he thought it a curse to the Land.”32

  Throughout this venture, Denton Offutt grew ever more impressed with Lincoln. “Lincoln can do any thing,” he marveled. “I really believe he could take the flat-boat back again up the river.”33 Upon Lincoln’s return from New Orleans, Offutt hired him to run a store and mill at New Salem. Lincoln readily accepted, delighted to have work that required little physical exertion and paid well. He had dabbled at merchandizing when his family had moved to Illinois; en route he sold needles, pins, pocketknives, eating utensils, and the like, which he had purchased as speculation just before leaving Indiana. Offutt had dreamed up the plan for a New Salem store while returning from Louisiana. Passing through St. Louis, he ordered goods shipped to New Salem and obtained the necessary license.

  New Salem

  In late July, Lincoln headed for the river village where he was remembered for his ungainly appearance and his exploits on the milldam. Many New Salemites hailed from the Rolling Fork area of Kentucky, near Lincoln’s boyhood home on Knob Creek. Among them was the older brother of Lincoln’s boyhood chum, Austin Gollaher. New Salem, with its two dozen families, a grain and saw mill, three stores, a saloon (“grocery” in frontier parlance), and a blacksmith shop, was considered an important small town. It served as a trading center for residents of Wolf, Sugar Grove, Concord, Sandridge, Little Grove, Athens, Irish Grove, Indian Point, Rock Creek, Clary’s Grove, and other settlements.

  New Salem was also a rough and primitive town where violence was commonplace and even religion reflected the crudeness of the frontier. The transplanted Kentuckians, mostly from Barren and Green counties, were hard-shell Baptists who opposed Sunday schools and Bible societies. They devoted Saturdays to shooting matches, card games, horse racing, cock and dog fights, drinking sprees, and fisticuffs. Combatants gouged, bit, kicked, and did anything they could to prevail. On Sunday men were seen with bruised faces, or worse still, missing fingers, eyes, or ears. Womenfolk placed bets on the outcome of fights. Strangers incautious enough to play cards lost their money and then got beaten up. Among the early settlers of Sangamon County, according to Lincoln’s friend Milton Hay, “the inherent meanness and vice of the human character frequently manifested itself. Some were given to brawls and violence. Some were malicious, and would vent their malice in slandering a neighbor or injuring his property.”34

  Gander pulling was so popular that a field was set aside for it. A contestant would grease the neck of a gander, lash its feet together, and suspend it from a high tree limb. He would then ride his horse at a fast clip beneath the limb, reach up, grab the gander’s head, and try to pull it off. If successful, he won the decapitated bird.

  In a frontier hamlet without a jail or whipping post, rowdies had little to fear if they misbehaved. When Baptists would immerse true believers in the Sangamon River, roughnecks would throw logs and animal carcasses from the high bluff, yelling and screaming all the while. From that same bluff the entire community witnessed a fistfight in which a combatant was killed. The Clary’s Grove boys were the most notorious bullies in town. “We had hard knuckles and hot blood,�
� said one of their gang members, Thomas S. Edwards. “We could give tough knocks and take em, without ither whining or bearing malice. Ef bad blood was bred at a raising or a shooting-match, it was middlin sure to be spilt afore sundown.… We always felt like knocking off somebody’s hat, or tramping on somebody’s moccasins.”35 In 1833, Edwards was indicted for riot and rape. Sally Marshal alleged that he entered her house one night, threw his coat on the floor, and said “that he would do as he pleased with her … he would throw her down there and would fuck her … and her Husband should stand and see it.”36

  New Salem’s living conditions were as rough as its people. To his family in New Hampshire, Charles James Fox Clarke described the village’s cabins, including those of the more prosperous farmers, as “not half so good as your old hogs pen and not any larger.”37 Those dwellings were little better than the half-faced camps of the original pioneers. A staple of the local diet was a form of bread called corn dodgers that were “so hard that you could knock a Texas steer down with a chunk of it, or split an end board forty yards offhand.”38 Writing from central Illinois in 1834, Stephen A. Douglas warned a friend in New York that “persons who have been accustomed to the older and more densely settled States, must expect to experience many inconveniences and perhaps I may add hardships, if they come here.”39 The drudgery of housework and child-rearing made life especially burdensome for women; an English observer called central Illinois “heaven for men and horses, but a very different place for women and oxen.”40 In 1830, a pioneer in nearby Tazewell County confided to a relative: “I pity our women very much.” Then he added, “I do not tell them so.”41