Frontier village merchants like Lincoln and Berry were general factotums for everyone and thus came to know what was happening in their neighborhoods. Stores were gathering places, often containing the post office, and usually had a whiskey barrel in a back room with a tin cup dangling from its side.
In January 1833, the new storekeepers bought up the stock of a competitor, Reuben Radford, whose place had been demolished by the Clary’s Grove boys, incensed that the clerk had refused to serve them more than two drinks. William G. Greene, who owned the building, bought the surviving merchandise from the agitated Radford for $400. Greene began to fret that he had overpaid, but his friend Lincoln said, “Cheer up, Billy, it’s a good thing; we will take an inventory.” Not understanding exactly what an inventory was, and fearing that the Clary’s Grove boys had committed one, Greene replied: “No more inventories for me.”132 Greene gladly accepted $650 from Lincoln and Berry for the goods and the store, which was a more substantial structure than the one they had.
The little store’s stock kept growing. That same month Berry and Lincoln applied for a license to sell liquor by the glass. Daniel Green Burner, who clerked in the store, dispensed drinks for 6¢ apiece. (Burner and several other New Salemites cast doubt on Lincoln’s 1858 claim, in the debates with Douglas, that Lincoln “never kept a grocery [saloon] anywhere in the world.” Lincoln might have been quibbling; his statement could be interpreted to mean that he never presided over a store where liquor was the main product sold.)133 Then, in April, the partners bought even more goods from a Beardstown firm. All this expansion left the entrepreneurs, as Lincoln put it, “deeper and deeper in debt,” and eventually the business “winked out.”134
The store failed not just because the partners were overextended but also because Berry was an undisciplined, hard-drinking fellow. He neglected the store and died in 1835, apparently of tuberculosis caused by his dissolute ways. At his funeral, his sin-hating, hard-hearted, prohibitionist father preached a temperance sermon rather than a proper eulogy for his son.
Making matters worse, Lincoln was too soft-hearted to deny anyone credit, no matter how impecunious the applicant might be. Nor could he sue his customers or otherwise pressure them to pay their bills. Moreover, he lacked enthusiasm for the job and was far too likely to interrupt a transaction with a long story. He also erred in letting the bibulous Berry wait on women and in candidly warning their good customers that the whiskey he sold would ruin them and that the tobacco was of poor quality. If he did not know much about some of the goods in the store, he would freely acknowledge his ignorance. He and Berry extended too much credit, bought and sold goods unwisely, failed to keep items properly stocked, and invested so much money in slow-selling merchandise that their stock became an unappealing hodge-podge. In short, they had little aptitude for the business.
When Berry died in 1835, Lincoln’s debts amounted to approximately $1,100. “That debt was the greatest obstacle I have ever met in life,” he told a friend. “I had no way of speculating, and could not earn money except by labor, and to earn by labor eleven hundred dollars, besides my living, seemed the work of a lifetime.” So Lincoln told his creditors that if they “would let me alone, I would give them all I could earn, over my living, as fast as I could earn it.” As late as 1860, Lincoln was still being dunned for payment of these New Salem debts. According to Herndon, “the debt galled him and hastened his wrinkles.”135
While struggling to pay his creditors, Lincoln had few expenses, for his rent was minimal. At first he slept for free in Offutt’s store and took his meals with John M. Camron, who charged him $1 per week. Later, Isaac Burner charged him the same fee for room and board. He lodged in the second Lincoln-Berry store even after it folded. When he roomed with James Short, Lincoln paid $2 a week. Meals and laundry were cheap. During his five and a half years in New Salem, Lincoln stayed with Caleb Carman, James Rutledge, the Camron family, and the cooper, Henry Onstot. He also lived with J. Rowan Herndon until that gentleman (perhaps accidentally) shot his wife to death in 1833. Lincoln then moved to the outskirts of the village to Mentor Graham’s home for six months.
Graham’s hospitality might have been inspired by a singular act of kindness on Lincoln’s part. The previous autumn the schoolmaster’s family had been very sick, especially his 7-year-old daughter, Ellen, of whom Lincoln was quite fond. Unable to tolerate milk, she needed bread, which Graham could not afford. As Graham later described it, “I was … too proud to tell the actual condition we were in. As I walked back to the street [from the mill], my sack on my arm and my head down, thinking over my sad lot, and the disappointment there would be at home, my little girl’s wan face uprose before me, and tears gathered in my eyes, falling thick and fast. Just then I had something touch my hand, and looking down, there lay a ten dollar bill. Turning quickly, I saw Lincoln slipping into his office door, glancing furtively toward me.”136
Lincoln also roomed at the tavern of Nelson Alley, another beneficiary of his generosity. After moving to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln heard that his former landlord, who had once lent him money, was incarcerated in a poorhouse. Lincoln made a personal visit to that facility and arranged for Alley to be released and located in a new home. Throughout his life, Lincoln unfailingly showed his gratitude to those who had helped him in times of need. He rapidly acquired a reputation as an unusually generous, charitable, benevolent young man. One cold winter day he offered to help a barefoot boy who was chopping wood to earn money for shoes. Lincoln sent the lad inside while he did the chopping for him. After completing the job, Lincoln told the boy to purchase the footwear. He also chopped wood and did other chores for widows and orphans. When he saw travelers bogged down, he stopped to help them, despite the taunts of his friends, who said: “Now Lincoln don’t make a d—d fool of yourself.”137
In May 1833, as he struggled to eke out a living, Lincoln was delighted to be named the postmaster of New Salem, a job he would hold until that post office closed three years later. The position had belonged to storekeeper Samuel Hill, who neglected his postal patrons in favor of customers for his merchandise, including liquor. Several New Salem women, indignant that they had to wait while tipplers were served their whiskey, got up a petition to replace Hill with Lincoln. Ossian M. Ross, postmaster at Havana, reviewed the petition, noted that it was signed by leading citizens, and forwarded it with his endorsement to Washington. Also behind the drive to oust Hill was Jason Duncan. Over Lincoln’s protests that he had no desire to see Hill fired, Duncan nonetheless preferred charges that led to Hill’s resignation and Lincoln’s appointment by the Jackson administration. Lincoln’s Whiggery did not hurt his chances because, as he explained, the office was “too insignificant, to make his politics an objection.”138 Besides, Lincoln was one of the few people in New Salem who could manage the paperwork. Nelson Alley and Alexander Trent guaranteed the mandatory $500 bond. Lincoln was greatly pleased, not only because he would be able to earn some money but also because he gained access to newspapers he did not subscribe to.
Lincoln’s duties were light, for the mail came just twice a week. When picking up their letters and periodicals, customers paid the postmaster (there were no stamps in those days), and sometimes Lincoln advanced the amount due. Of a trusting nature himself, Lincoln was stung when George Spears sent a man for the mail and demanded a receipt for the payment. Lincoln obliged but enclosed a sharply-worded note: “At your request I send you a receipt for the postage on your paper. I am some what surprised at your request. I will however comply with it. The law requires News paper postage to be paid in advance and now that I have waited a full year you choose to wound my feelings by insinuating that unless you get a receipt I will probably make you pay it again.”139 On receiving the receipt and note, Spears immediately rode to New Salem to apologize and explain that it was his messenger he distrusted, not the postmaster.
Another postal customer, who irritated Lincoln repeatedly, became the butt of a retaliatory prank. Johnson Elm
ore, ignorant but ostentatiously proud, pestered Lincoln several times a day with the question, “Anything for me?” when obviously there would not be. Exasperated but amused, Lincoln drafted a letter to Elmore from a fictitious black woman in Kentucky. The missive discussed possums, dances, corn shuckings, and ended with “Johns—Come & see me and old master won’t Kick you out of the Kitchen any more.” When Elmore received the fake letter, he could not, in fact, read it (Lincoln knew he was illiterate), but Elmore pretended to do so. Elmore then took the letter to literate friends who told him what it said, prompting him to think they were fooling him. Finally, he brought the document back to postmaster Lincoln. Though it was difficult for him to keep a straight face, Lincoln read the entire letter aloud. Never again was he bothered by the insistent request, “Anything here for me?”140
When business took him out of the village, Lincoln delivered letters to homes, using his hat as a mailbag. Storing letters and papers in a hat was not unusual on the frontier, and Lincoln did it for many years.
Lincoln kept his accounts carefully. After the New Salem post office closed in 1836, he had a surplus of about $16, which he took with him when he moved to Springfield the following year. A few months later, a government agent approached Lincoln’s friend Anson G. Henry about the outstanding balance. Henry, fearing that the cash-strapped young man might not have it on hand, offered to help Lincoln. But it was unnecessary, for the erstwhile postmaster had in his room all the money—in fact, the very coins—that he had received in New Salem. He turned the funds over to the agent with a simple explanation: “I never make use of money that does not belong to me.”141
By the middle of 1833, Lincoln’s personal finances reached low ebb. The postmaster job paid little, and his debts weighed him down so much that he often had to struggle to pay his modest board bill. He took every odd job he could—serving as an election clerk, splitting rails, tending both the grain mill and the sawmill, clerking in stores (among them Samuel Hill’s), and harvesting crops for James Short, who praised him as “the best hand at husking corn on the stalk I ever saw. I used to consider myself very good, but he would gather two loads to my one.”142 All these jobs yielded just enough to make ends meet.
Lincoln’s economic situation improved considerably when John Calhoun, the Democratic surveyor of Sangamon County, offered to hire him as an assistant. Business was heavy in the northern part of the county, where New Salem was located, because the voyage of the Talisman had prompted most landowners to have their property surveyed for town lots. Frontier wags jested that soon the whole district would be laid out in towns, with no land left for agriculture. The townsite craze lasted from 1832 to 1838. Speculators filed on lands at $1.25 an acre and resold them for higher sums. Town lots became one of the principal exports of Illinois, peddled in the East by slick salesmen. There arose a strong demand for surveyors, whose stakes covered the vacant prairies.
Calhoun and his principal assistant, Thomas M. Neale, knew Lincoln from the Black Hawk War, when they all served in the same regiment. Neale may have recommended Lincoln for the job, and when he replaced Calhoun in 1835, Neale retained Lincoln as an assistant. Friendship trumped politics when Lincoln was offered the job; both Neale and Calhoun were Democrats, as was Pollard Simmons of New Salem, who also endorsed Lincoln. Simmons was devoted to Lincoln, who described Pollard as being “about the best friend I ever had.”143 Lincoln reciprocated by voting for both Calhoun and Neale. But when Simmons jubilantly delivered the actual job offer, Lincoln asked, “Do I have to give up any of my principles for this job? If I have to surrender any thought or principle to get it I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.” Assured that he would not have to abandon his Whig convictions, Lincoln gratefully accepted.144 After he called on Calhoun to accept the offer formally, the chief surveyor’s sister-in-law disparaged the new assistant’s appearance; Calhoun replied, “he is no common man.”145 Lincoln was ever grateful to Calhoun, whom he held in high esteem and regarded affectionately. A mannerly and agreeable gentleman, Calhoun was unfortunately ruined by alcohol. In later years he would clash with Lincoln in political debates, but the two remained friends despite Calhoun’s struggles with whiskey.
Lincoln attacked his surveying duties with characteristic industriousness. He procured a compass and surveyor’s chain, and began to study both Robert Gibson’s Treatise on Practical Surveying and Abel Flint’s System of Geometry and Trigonometry: Together with a Treatise on Surveying. Both books emphasized higher math, including logarithms, plane geometry, and trigonometry. It is not certain how much time Lincoln spent learning the art of surveying, but it was surely more than six weeks, as some have improbably asserted. He had studied the surveyor’s art ever since mastering grammar. Once the latter task was accomplished, he told William Greene, “if that is what they call a science I’ll subdue another.”146 He evidently mastered the subject without assistance. Mentor Graham claimed that he taught Lincoln surveying, but that is highly unlikely, for Graham knew little math. (Indeed, Graham’s entire claim to be “the man who taught Lincoln” is unfounded. He barely achieved limited certification to teach and was widely regarded as a long-winded classroom tyrant suited only to lower levels of instruction. His former pupils mostly spoke ill of him.)
Having learned the basics, Lincoln set out with his compass, 66-foot chain, marking pins, range poles, plumb bobs, stakes, and ax to pursue his new calling. When a friend told him he needed a horse, Lincoln demurred, saying he “was somewhat of a ‘hoss’ himself.”147 For a time he borrowed a mount from Jack Armstrong; eventually he bought one, along with a bridle and saddle, on credit.
When he finally recorded his first survey on January 6, 1834, Lincoln’s friends and neighbors helped him celebrate his good fortune. A good surveyor and a welcome presence, Lincoln made many friends throughout the sprawling county. The exposure would serve him well in his political future.
Charles Chandler, a Connecticut-born physician who settled on Panther Creek in 1832, had a particular reason to think well of Lincoln. Chandler wanted to buy 80 acres adjacent to his property, and frontier custom dictated that as a settler he had first refusal rights on parcels adjoining his original claim. But another Connecticut newcomer, Henry Laurens Ingalls, coveted the same tract. Once Chandler learned that Ingalls might beat him out for the land, he quickly borrowed some cash, saddled up, and began a desperate dash to the Springfield land office—where Ingalls was also headed. As he rode along, Chandler told his story to some horsemen he had overtaken. One of them was Lincoln, who immediately offered to swap his fresh mount for Chandler’s tired one. Chandler declined, estimating that he would beat Ingalls to Springfield anyway, but he was grateful for the offer. “I became a Lincoln man then,” he recalled, and when he needed to have that new tract surveyed, he hired the young man from New Salem.148
Lincoln quickly gained an enviable reputation as a skillful surveyor. It was important for settlers to register their timber lots, especially to protect them from trespassers and unauthorized pillaging of valuable trees. Lincoln became the preferred expert for determining survey lines in the dense forest. Whenever settlers like Henry McHenry had a disagreement over property boundaries, Lincoln refereed the dispute to the satisfaction of all. McHenry and his neighbors argued over the location of a corner and chose Lincoln to arbitrate the matter. After spending three or four days surveying the area, Lincoln stuck a staff into the ground and announced, “Gentlemen—here is the Corner.” When the contesting parties dug at that spot, they found the remains of the original survey stake with a lump of charcoal under it, just as the first surveyor had left it.149
Between 1834 and 1836, Lincoln surveyed homesites, roads, school sections, and towns, including New Boston, Petersburg, Huron, and Bath. While platting Petersburg, Lincoln changed a line as an act of kindness to Jemima Elmore, widow of a member of the company he had commanded in the Black Hawk War. He calculated that if he ran a street in the usual fashion it would slice a few feet off the end of Mrs. El
more’s house, which was all she owned or was ever likely to own. Lincoln said: “I reckon it won’t hurt anything out here if I skew the line a little.”150 Lincoln’s work in laying out New Boston earned high praise from Peter Van Bergen, who had invested money to develop the site. “Mr. Lincoln was a good surveyor,” Van Bergen said: “he did it all himself, without help from anybody except chainmen &c. and also made a plat of it.”151 The founders of Huron liked his work so much that they allegedly offered him $5,000 to establish a store there.
Surveying on the frontier was rugged work, hard on men, equipment, and clothes alike. Surveyors lived outdoors in all conditions while trying to impose order on a wild, untracked land. Lincoln often went to work in an old, broken straw hat, with no coat or vest, and pants that barely met his boot tops. Elizabeth Abell, in whose home Lincoln lodged while he was surveying the hills between New Salem and Petersburg, recalled that he would often return at night “ragged and scratch[ed] up with the Bryers.” He “would laugh over it and say that was a poore man[’]s lot.” His trousers often had to be “foxed”—that is, have a buckskin cover sewn on the outside of the leg—to save them from total destruction in the brush. Mrs. Abell foxed Lincoln’s trousers for him, as did Hannah Armstrong, whose husband, Jack, was a friend and sometime chainman for Lincoln. She also made Lincoln deerskin breeches and shirts.152
Despite his success as a surveyor, Lincoln continued to have financial troubles. The man who sold him a horse on credit, a colorful eccentric named Thomas Watkins, sued Lincoln for payment in April 1834. That same month other creditors, including Peter Van Bergen, also won judgments against him. To satisfy the debts, Lincoln’s surveying tools and horse were sold at a sheriff’s auction. A friend from Sandridge, James Short, saw that Lincoln was “very much discouraged” and heard him say “he would let the whole thing go by the board.” Generously, Short bought Lincoln’s possessions for $120 and returned them. Trying to express his gratitude, Lincoln said simply, “Uncle Jimmy, I will do as much for you sometimes.”153 (During the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Short to supervise an Indian agency.)
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