Religious practices in New Salem resembled those Lincoln had witnessed in Indiana. In 1835, Charles James Fox Clarke reported that there were “no settled ministers except in the large towns such as county seats &c. All the preaching we hear is from traveling ministers, such as the free will baptist, iron jacket baptist, Cumberland Presbyterians, Methodists Campbelites &c.”42 To disguise their ignorance, those preachers would often resort to histrionic gestures and high decibel levels.
Drunkenness was common, even among children. Looking back on his early years, Lincoln recalled that “intoxicating liquor [was] recognized by every body, used by every body and repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the first draught of the infant, and the last draught of the dying man. From the sideboard of the parson, down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and the other disease. Government provided it for its soldiers and sailors; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or hoe-down; any where without it, was positively insufferable.”43 Some New Englanders in the village, led by the pious Dr. John Allen, tried to civilize it by establishing a temperance society. (According to New Salem tradition, Lincoln once said, while pointing to Allen: “There stands the man who, years ago, was instrumental in convincing me of the evils of trafficking in and using ardent spirits. I am glad that I ever saw him. I am glad that I ever heard his testimony on this terrible subject.”)44 When the local schoolmaster joined Allen’s group, he was expelled from the Baptist church because the fundamentalist congregants regarded membership in such a society as an unwarranted distraction from God’s work. When the same congregation subsequently dismissed a member for drunkenness, a perplexed fellow, brandishing a whiskey flask, asked for clarification: “Brethering, it seems to me that you are not [con]sistent because you have turned out one man for taking the [temperance] pledge and another for getting drunk. Now, brethering, how much of this critter have I got to drink to have good standing among you?”45 Temperance advocates in New Salem faced ridicule and stiff opposition.
For all its drawbacks, New Salem offered residents a chance to rise based on their talent, ability, and industry. No artificial social barriers stood in anyone’s way. As Stephen A. Douglas reported from the region, “no man acknowledges another his superior unless his talents, his principles and his good conduct entitle him to that distinction.”46 Soon after his arrival, Lincoln met the challenge presented by what Dr. Allen called “a notoriously wicked and intemperate place,” taking advantage of frontier equality by making friends and allies even of the Clary’s Grove boys.47
Storekeeper
As he entered New Salem in the summer of 1831, Lincoln thought of himself as “a sort of flo[a]ting Drift wood” swept along by the floods that inundated the region after the “winter of deep snow.”48 Because neither Offutt nor his goods had arrived yet, Lincoln had to postpone his debut as a merchant. He therefore continued as a riverman, piloting a small boat to Beardstown for Dr. David P. Nelson, who was taking his wife and family to Texas. The trip was challenging, for the river had over-flowed its banks, and Lincoln sometimes ran far out into the prairie. At Beardstown he awaited the arrival of Offutt’s merchandise, which was to be transported to New Salem by a fellow named Potter. When Potter asked how he would recognize Lincoln, Offutt replied: “You can’t mistake him; he’s as long as a beanpole, and as awkward as he is long.”49
With nothing much to do after the Beardstown trip, Lincoln, as he put it, “rapidly made acquaintances and friends.”50 The genial personality that won him popularity at Sangamotown did the same in New Salem. One new friend, schoolteacher Mentor Graham, was clerking at the polls on August 1, an election day, when Lincoln entered to vote for the pro–Henry Clay candidate for Congress—an unpopular choice in that heavily Democratic precinct. In need of an assistant, Graham asked the rangy newcomer if he could write. “I can make a few rabbit tracks,” Lincoln replied.51 Graham pressed him into service and later testified that Lincoln “performed the duties with great facility—much fairness and honesty & impartially.”52 During lulls, Lincoln delighted his colleagues and voters with jokes and stories. Another townsman, Royal A. Clary, recalled that he “was humorous—witty & good natured & that geniality drew him into our notice So quick.”53 Thanks to those qualities, the penniless newcomer “had nothing only plenty of friends,” as his companion George Close put it.54
In September 1831, Lincoln finally began his career as Offutt’s store clerk in a rented log storehouse, dispensing coffee, tea, gunpowder, liquor, tobacco, and other commodities. Offutt hired two assistants for Lincoln, Charles Maltby and William Greene, a 19-year-old Tennessean who, like Lincoln, was a highly entertaining story teller. Greene’s main duty at the store was to assess applicants for credit. The three young men slept at the store and took meals at Bowling Green’s home, three-quarters of a mile from the village. Greene found his tall colleague “attentive—Kind—generous & accommodating,” and recalled that he and Lincoln “slept on the same cott & when one turned over the other had to do likewise.”55
Lincoln became a popular store clerk. Jesse Baker said that he “drew much attention from the very first. His striking, awkward, and generally peculiar appearance advertised the store round about and drew many customers, who never quit trading there as long as young Abe Lincoln clerked in the establishment. He gave good weight; he was chock full of accommodation, and he wasn’t a ‘smart Aleck.’ ”56
Lincoln’s integrity made him especially appealing to women customers, who trusted him to give an accurate assessment of the wares. Mrs. Hannah Armstrong said she “liked him first rate” because “he was so pleasant and kind.”57 One woman bought a dress for which she paid $2.37. Later that day Lincoln realized he had overcharged her six and a quarter cents, which he refunded to her that very evening. Another woman asked for a pound of tea, which he measured out on a scale inadvertently using the half-pound weight rather than the pound. When he discovered his error, he promptly went to her home and gave her another half-pound of tea. Episodes such as these earned him the sobriquet “Honest Abe.”
Although he usually treated his customers kindly, Lincoln could on occasion lose patience with them. He took offense at one Harvey Lee Ross, who asked to see some gloves. Lincoln showed him a pair that he identified as being made of dogskin. When Ross asked how he knew they were dogskin, Lincoln, “rasped” at the challenging tone of the question, replied: “I will tell you how I know they are dogskin gloves. Jack Clary’s dog killed Tom Watkins’ sheep, and Tom Watkins’ boy killed the dog, and old John Mounts tanned the dogskin, and Sally Spears made the gloves, and that is how I know they are dogskin gloves.”58 Lincoln took umbrage at another customer, Charlie Reavis, who used profanity around women in the store. When Reavis ignored warnings to stop, Lincoln accosted him. “I have spoken to you a number of times about swearing in this store in the presence of ladies,” he said angrily, “and you have not heeded. Now I am going to rub the lesson in so that you will not forget again.” Lincoln grabbed Reavis by the arm, hustled him out of the store, threw him to the ground, and rubbed smartweed in his face.59
Lincoln, Maltby, and Greene assumed new responsibilities when Offutt rented the flour and saw mills whose dam had obstructed the flatboat earlier that year. These mills, the only ones within 20 miles of New Salem, brought in a great deal of business. There Lincoln helped unload wheat, measure it out, tie up bags, and collect payments. Offutt also kept Lincoln busy splitting rails and constructing a pen for 1,000 hogs.
Even with all these added duties, Lincoln still had a fair amount of free time. Saturdays were busy, when farmers came to town in large numbers, but the rest of the week was quieter. Lincoln therefore could devote much of his time to the mill while Greene and Maltby minded the store. Most business was transacted between 9 A.M. and 3 P.M. After the store closed, Lincoln would usually devote an hour to wrestling or other physical exercise. With his extremely long legs, he was especially successful in jumpi
ng contests.
Lincoln did not spend time gambling, a form of amusement he condemned. When he urged Greene to give it up, his friend protested that he was 90¢ in debt to a demanding creditor and so could not quit until he had won it back. Lincoln offered him a deal: “Billy, if you will promise that you will never gamble again, I’ll put up a job that will beat him.”
Greene promised to stop “if you will only help me get ahead of him, I swear it.”
“Well,” said Lincoln, “when he comes into the store again, you bet him one of those seven dollar hats that I can drink out of a full whisky barrel.” When the opportunity arose, Greene made the wager, and the men turned to Lincoln. Deceptively strong, and uncommonly clever, the towering Lincoln “squatted down and lifted the one end of the barrel on one knee, then lifted the other end on the other knee, and stooping over, actually succeeded in taking a drink out of the bunghole, which, however, he immediately spat out.” Now free of debt, Greene kept his word and gave up gambling.60
Like Greene, Denton Offutt also liked to wager, and a bet he made led to one of the formative episodes in Lincoln’s young life. Offutt bet rival storekeeper Bill Clary $5 that his lanky clerk could outwrestle any challenger, including Jack Armstrong, leader of the Clary’s Grove boys. (Offutt reportedly had won $50 in New Orleans betting that Lincoln could lift 1,000 pounds.) As one of the Clary’s Grove boys remembered, he and his cohorts “haw-hawed at this a little, but thought it was some of Dent’s ‘wind,’ for Dent could lie like a peddler.… But Jack Armstrong, the pride of our settlement, him that we used to call Salem’s Glory, tough as whit-leather, and wiry as a wild-cat, the man that never could be throwed, and we believed never could be throwed, commenced talking back at Dent, saying that his bones was aching with nothing but strength, that he had been laying lazy long enough, and would like a good freshener of a wrestle fust-rate.”61
Lincoln, who did not share Armstrong’s enthusiasm, was quite irritated by Offutt’s challenge. He had become popular in New Salem and did not wish to lose the good will of anybody. Moreover, he was by nature a peacemaker, not a fighter. Whenever he and his friend Russell Godbey of New Salem saw a fight taking place, Lincoln would laughingly say: “Lets go and break up the Row.”62 Back in Indiana he had allegedly settled a bitter quarrel between two neighbors over the ownership of a goose. But Lincoln also knew he could not back down from Offutt’s challenge to the Clary’s Grove boys without being branded a coward.
The day of the match a large crowd gathered near Offutt’s store. Though Armstrong was exceptionally strong and a clever wrestler, he found it difficult to cope with Lincoln’s great reach and height. As the contest went on, the newcomer was getting the better of it. Just as it seemed that Lincoln would prevail, Bill Clary shouted to his man, “Throw him anyway, Jack.”
Breaking the rules of wrestling with a hold permissible only in scuffling, Armstrong instantly threw Lincoln, who angrily “said that if it ever came right, he would give Bill Clary a good licking.”63 At that point a general fight nearly broke out, but Lincoln fearlessly quelled the threat.
John Todd Stuart, Lincoln’s friend, mentor and first law partner, called this contest “the turning point in Lincoln’s life.”64 His courage, strength, and good-natured acceptance of Armstrong’s violation of the rules impressed New Salemites, especially the Clary’s Grove boys. They honored him with invitations to referee their horse races, where he further cemented his reputation for fairness. Armstrong became his fast friend and admirer. The popularity he thus gained helped lay the foundation for his political career. As long as Lincoln lived in New Salem, the Clary’s Grove boys supported him at election time. (Only later, when he ran for Congress from Springfield, did they vote against him.) In those days, support from the “butcher knife boys” was essential to get a man elected. That Lincoln won such support without sharing their enthusiasm for drinking, gander pulling, and general mayhem was a tribute to his remarkable capacity for making and keeping friends.
Lincoln’s essential fairness won him a host of other admirers. A friend who judged a race along with Lincoln declared that he was “the fairest man I ever had to deal with. If Lincoln is in the County when I die I want him to be my adm[inistrato]r, for he is the only man I ever met with that was wholly & purely and unselfishly honest.”65 A cockfight that Lincoln officiated would be immortalized during the Civil War. Babb McNabb’s rooster was pitted against Tom Watkins’s bird, but when Lincoln threw the two feathered combatants into the ring, McNabb’s shunned the challenge. Its furious owner leaped into the pit, seized the bird, and flung him onto a pile of wood, where he raised his head, spread his wing, and crowed lustily. In disgust, McNabb addressed him: “Yes, you little cuss, you are great on dress parade, but you ain’t worth a damn in a fight.” Lincoln remembered the incident years later and in exasperation he likened General George B. McClellan to McNabb’s rooster.66
Self-Education
Once established as a promising young man in New Salem, Lincoln began steadily bettering himself, preparing for a career in politics. Most nights, after he and Charles Maltby closed the store, Lincoln would settle into reading and study from 8 o’clock to 11, and then review what he had done.
At first Lincoln concentrated on English grammar, for he did not want to seem like an uneducated bumpkin. In an 1860 autobiographical sketch, written in the third person, he stated: “After he was twenty three, and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar, imperfectly of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does.”67 Lincoln began to study grammar soon after he took up his duties as a clerk. The village schoolteacher, Mentor Graham, alleged that Lincoln told him one day that he “had a notion of stud[y]ing grammar.” Graham replied: “If you ever Expect to go before the public in any Capacity I think it is the best thing you can do.” Eager to begin, Lincoln mused, “If I had a grammar I would Commence now.” Curiously, Graham himself did not own such a book, but he thought John Vance did. Lincoln promptly walked several miles to Vance’s, borrowed a copy of Samuel Kirkham’s English Grammar in Familiar Lectures, and “then turned his immediate & almost undivided attention to English grammar.”68 Lincoln found that volume “a puzzler at the start, with its four, five and six headed rules, about as complicated to beginners as the Longer Catechism and the Thirty-nine Articles to young ministers.”69 A New Salemite called Kirkham’s dry book “the hardest grammar, I think that anybody ever studied.”70 Night after night, Lincoln labored over the rules and regulations of proper English usage. His assistant, William G. Greene, listened to him recite its rules, correcting him when he made mistakes. Greene recalled that “when he got through with that grammar he knew more grammar than the man who made the book.”71
Lincoln mastered grammar easily and quickly, obtaining a working knowledge of the subject in a few weeks. Though Greene provided only a little help, his brother Lynn, who had attended Illinois College, spent several days instructing him. Years later, Lincoln told Jonathan Baldwin Turner, who served on the faculty at Illinois College from 1833 to 1848, that his “only instruction in the English language had been from me, through the Green brothers of Tallula, Illinois, while they were students at Illinois College and he was a hired hand working for their mother in the harvest-fields.”72 Another helpmate for Lincoln, Dr. Jason Duncan, modestly stated that “Abraham requested me to assist him in the study of English Grammer, which I consented to do to the extent of my limited ability.” Lincoln’s rapid progress amazed Duncan: “his application through the winter [of 1831–1832] was assiduous, and untiring, his intuitive faculties were Surprising. [H]e seemed to master the construction of the english language and apply the rules for the same in a most astonishing manner.”73
In fact, Lincoln never completely overcame his primitive linguistic background. Even in his presidential years his speech betrayed his frontier roots. He began his celebrated 1860 Cooper Union speech by saying, “Mr. Cheerman.”74 As president he said “unly” for “only,” “own” for “one
,” “waal” for “well,” “thar” for “there,” “was” for “were,” “git” for “get,” “ye” for “you,” “rare” for “rear,” and “one on ’em” for “one of them.” George Templeton Strong, who recorded some of these Hoosierisms, called the president’s grammar “weak” and deemed him “a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla, in respect of outside polish.” Strong heard Lincoln say, “me and the Attorney General’s very chicken-hearted!”75 In his antebellum career as a lawyer, he used “ain’t” freely, greeting friends in court with a jocular: “Ain’t you glad to see me?” or “Ain’t you glad I come?”76 During his famous 1858 debates with Stephen A. Douglas, he one day asked: “Ain’t Hitt here?”77 When a magician at the White House asked for the president’s handkerchief, Lincoln replied, “You’ve got me now, I ain’t got any.”78 He said of a supposed relative, “She ain’t my cousin, but she thinks she is.”79
Settled in New Salem, Lincoln became a bookworm. He occasionally indulged in sports and games but never to the neglect of his work or studies. If he had a few minutes of spare time at the store, or, later, at the post office, he would crack open a book. He read walking to dinner at the boardinghouse and strolling about New Salem. When he boarded with the family of the village cooper, Henry Onstot, Lincoln would read after work lying down before the fireplace. When Mrs. Onstot, busy preparing supper, complained that he was in her way, he replied: “Just step over me, Susan.” After the meal, he would resume reading.80
Now and then Lincoln would walk around reading Kirkham’s grammar and would mischievously grab young Robert Rutledge, son of New Salem’s innkeeper, hold him under one arm, and nonchalantly continue his ramble, pretending not to notice the lad’s yells and kicks. Eventually he would express mock surprise at discovering the youngster’s presence.
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 12
