Back Hair Removal Illinois
Lincoln's Autobiographies
December 20, 1859
I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of poor families - second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was from a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, Kentucky, about 1781 or 2, where, a year or two later, was killed by Indians, not in battle, but secretly, when he was working to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify with New England family of that name, ended in nothing more definite, a similarity of names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.
My father, the death of his father, but was six years old and grew up Litterally [sic], no education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We arrived at our new home at the time the state entered the Union. It was a wild region with many bears and other wildlife, even in the forest. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called, without qualification ever required of a teacher beyond "READIN, writin and cipherin "the rule of three. If a straggler to understand Latin happened to reside in the district, was considered a Wizzard [sic]. There was absolutely nothing to excite the ambition of education. Of course, when the age I did not know much. But somehow, I could read, write and count to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little progress they have now in this store of education, I have gathered from time to time under the pressure of necessity.
Me bred for agricultural work, which continued until I was twenty years. At twenty-one came to Illinois, and spent the first year in the county Macon. Then I came to New-Salem (at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County), where he spent a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came Black Hawk War and was elected Captain of Volunteers - a success which gave me more pleasure than any I've had since. I left the campaign, I was elated, candidate for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten - the only time I have been beaten by people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During this legislative period I had studied law and moved to Springfield to practice it. In 1846, I was once elected to the lower house of Congress. It was not a candidate for reelection. From 1849 to 1854, inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever. Always a liberal in politics, and generally in the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses - I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is well known.
If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it can say, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, almost, in the lean, weighing an average of one hundred eighty pounds, dark complexion, with black hair and gray eyes - no other trademarks or remembered.
June 1860
Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809, then in Hardin, now training in the county's most recent La Rue, Kentucky. His father, Thomas, and grandfather, Abraham, born in Rockingham County, Virginia, where his ancestors had come from Berks County, Pennsylvania. His lineage has been traced no father back than this. The family originally Quakers, though in recent times have moved away peculiar customs of the people. The grandfather, Abraham, had four brothers - Isaac, Jacob, John, and Thomas. To our knowledge, the descendants of Jacob and John are still in Virginia. Isaac went to a place near where Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee come together, and their descendants are in that region. Thomas came to Kentucky, then many years and died there, whence his descendants went to Missouri. Abraham, the grandfather of the subject of this sketch, came to Kentucky, and was killed by Indians around the year 1784. He left a widow, three sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Mordecai, remained in Kentucky until late in life, when he moved to Hancock County, Illinois where he later died, and where several of his descendants still remain. The second son of Josiah, removed a day earlier for a place in Blue River, now Hancock County, Indiana, but no recent information that he or his family has been obtained. The elder sister, Mary, married Ralph Crum, and some of its descendants are now known to be in Breckenridge County, Kentucky. The second sister, Nancy, married William Inc, and his family are not known to have left Kentucky, but not There is recent information from them. Thomas, the younger son and the father of our subject, by the early death of his father, and very narrow circumstances of his mother, even in the childhood was a wandering child to work, and grew up literally without education. He never did more in the way of writing that bunglingly write their own name. Before he was grown he spent a year as a laborer with his uncle Isaac on Watauga, a branch of Holston River. Getting back into Kentucky, and having reached its twenty - eighth year, he married Nancy Hanks - mother of the subject at hand - in 1806. She was born in Virginia, her family and the name of Hanks, and other names, now reside in Coles, in Macon, and Adams Counties, Illinois, Iowa and also in our subject has no brother or sister of full or half blood. He a sister older than himself, grown and married, but died many years ago, leaving no children, a brother, younger than he, who died in infancy. Before leaving Kentucky, he and his sister were sent for short periods, to ABC schools, the first led by Zachary Riney, and the second by Caleb Hazel.
At this time, his father was living at Knob Creek, on the road to Bardstown, Ky., to Nashville, Tennessee, at a point three or three and half miles south or southwest of Atherton's Ferry, in the Fork Stones. From here he moved to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in the fall of 1816, Abraham after being in its eighth year. This withdrawal was partly because of slavery, but mostly because of the difficulty of land titles in Kentucky. Installed in a forest intact, and removing surplus wood was the great task ahead. Abraham, though very young, was large of his age, and had put an ax in his hands to the time, and that even within the twenty-third year was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument - which, of course, in plowing and harvesting. In Abraham took an early start as a hunter who never was much improved afterwards. A few days before the end of its eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham with a rifle, pistol, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never pulled a trigger on any larger game. In the fall of 1818 his mother died, and a year after his father married Mrs. Sally Johnston, at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a widow with three children from his first marriage. She proved to be a good guy and the mother of Abraham, and still living in Coles County, Illinois. There was children of this marriage. The residence of his father, continued in the same place in Indiana until 1830. While here Abraham went to ABC schools by Littles, held successively by Andrew Crawford, - Sweeney, and Azel W. Dorsey. He does not remember any other. The family of Mr. Dorsey now resides in Schuyler County, Illinois. Abraham now thinks that the total of their entire education not equivalent to a year. He was never in a college or academy as a student and not within a college or academy building until it had already licensed lawyer. What is on the way education has been recovered. After he was twenty-three and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar - imperfectly, of course, but to talk and write as well as it does now. He studied and nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he was a member of Congress. He laments his lack of education, and does what he can to fill the gap. In its tenth year was kicked by a horse and apparently killed for a time. When I was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, made his first trip on a barge to New Orleans. He was just a pawn, and he and a son of the owner without help from others, made the trip. The nature of some of the burden of "burden" as it was called, made it necessary to persist and the sugar trade along the coast, and a night were attacked by seven Negroes with intent to kill and rob them. Some who were injured in the melee, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then "cut cable", "anchor" and left.
March 1, 1830, Abraham has just completed its twenty-first year, his father and family, with families of two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, left the old home in Indiana and came to Illinois. Their mode of transportation was wagons drawn by teams of oxen, and Abraham drove one of the teams. They came to Macon County, and stopped there some time in the month of March. His father and his family settled a new site on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the intersection of Timberland and the prairie, about ten miles west of Decatur. They built a log cabin, which they took, and made enough lanes for nearly ten acres of land, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of maize planted there the same year. These are or are supposed to be, the rails about which so much has been said earlier, when these are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham.
The sons-in-law settled temporarily in other places in the county. In autumn all hands were badly affected by malaria and fever, which had not been used, and which were greatly discouraged, so much so that the output of the county determined. They remained, however, during the following winter, which was the very snow winter famous "deep" in Illinois. During the winter Abraham, along with his stepmother's son, John D. Johnston, John Hanks, but live in Macon County, were rented to Denton Offutt to take a barge of Beardstown, Illinois, New Orleans, and therefore were to join him - Offutt - at Springfield, Illinois, as soon as snow, must go. When she left, we approach the first of March, 1831, the county was so flooded as to make land travel failing to avoid the difficulty purchased a large canoe, and came by the Sangamon River in it. This is the time and the manner of Abraham's first entrance into Sangamon County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but I learned from him that he had failed to get a boat in Beardstown. This led to his recruitment to him for twelve dollars per month each, and get the wood trees and building a boat at Old Sangamon Town in the Sangamon River, seven miles northwest of Springfield, which boat they took to New Orleans, substantially in the previous contract.
During this boat-enterprise knowledge with Offutt, who was previously a complete stranger, he conceived a taste for Abraham, and believing that he could in turn tells him that he contracted with him to act as secretary to him, on his return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and a mill in New Salem, then in Sangamon, now Menard County. Hanks had not gone to New Orleans, but having a family, and be likely to be arrested in his home as first expected, had returned from St. Louis. He is the same John Hanks who now engineers the "rail enterprise" at Decatur, and is a cousin of the mother of Abraham. Abraham's father, with his own family and others mentioned, had, in pursuance of their intention, removed from Macon to Coles County. John D. Johnston, the stepmother's son, went with them, and Abraham stopped indefinitely and for the first time, as it were, by himself at New Salem, before mentioned. This was in July 1831. He quickly became known and friends. In less than a year Offutt business was not - barely - when the Black Hawk War of 1832 broke out. Abraham joined a volunteer company, and for its own surprise, was elected captain of it. He says he has not had any success in life which gave him much satisfaction. He went to the campaign was about three months, met the normal difficulties of such issuance, but was not in the battle. He now owns, in Iowa, the ground on which to justify their own service were located. Returning from the campaign, and encouraged by his great popularity among his immediate neighbors, the same year he ran for the legislature, and was beaten - his own enclosure, however, cast a vote 277 for and 7 against him - and that, too, while he was a man of clay declared, and the enclosure to fall after a majority 115 to General Jackson over Mr. Clay. This was the only time Abraham was always the same in a direct popular vote. He was now without means and business, but was eager to stay with his friends, who had treated him so generously, especially as he had nothing to go elsewhere. He studied what to do - think of learn the blacksmith trade - thought of having to study law - rather thought he could not succeed at that without a better education. Before long, strangely, a man offered to sell, and sold to Abraham and another as poor as himself, an old warehouse of goods on credit. They opened as merchants, and he says that was the store. Of course I did nothing but get deeper and deeper in debt. He was appointed postmaster in New Salem - the office is too insignificant for their oppositional politics. The store went out. Sangamon Inspector Abraham offered to delegate some of his work that was within his part of the county. He accepted, took a compass and chain, studied Flint and Gibson a little, and was in it. This bread of contract, and kept soul and body together. The elections of 1834 came, and then was elected to the legislature by the highest vote for any candidate. Major John T. Stuart, then in the practice of law, also was elected. During scrutiny, in a private conversation he encouraged Abraham [to] study law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and it really was. He studied with nobody. Still mixed in the topography of paying bills on board and clothing. When the legislature met on lawbooks withdrew, but were restarted at the end of the session. He was reelected in 1836, 1838 and 1840. In the fall of 1836 obtained a law license, and on April 15, 1837, he moved to Springfield, and commenced practice - his old friend Stuart take in the partnership. March 3, 1837, by a protest entered the "Illinois House Journal" of that date, on pages 817 and 818, Abraham, with Dan Stone, another representative of Sangamon, briefly defined his position on the issue of slavery, and so far it goes, then was the same as it is now. The protest is as follows:
"The resolutions on the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its current session, the undersigned protest against the passage of it.
"They believe that the institution of slavery is based on both on injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than decrease their ills.
"They think that the United States Congress has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States.
"They believe the United States Congress has the power under the Constitution to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that power should not be exercised unless, at the request of the District's population.
"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.
"Dan Stone,
"A Lincoln
"Representatives from Sangamon County.
In 1838 and 1840, the Lincoln's party voted for him as President, but are a minority who was not elected. After 1840, declined re-election to the legislature. He was in the Harrison electoral ticket in 1840, and in Clay in 1844, and spent much time and labor on both cloths. In November 1842, he married Mary, daughter of Robert S. Todd, Lexington, Kentucky. They have three living children, all sons, one born in 1843, one in 1850 and one in 1853. Who lost one, who was born in 1846.
In 1846 he was elected member of the lower House of Congress, and served a single term, which begins in December 1847, and ends with the inauguration of General Taylor, in March 1849. All the battles of the war with Mexico had been fought before Mr. Lincoln sat in Congress, but the U.S. military was still in Mexico, and the peace treaty was not complete and formally ratified until after June. Much has been said of his course in Congress in regard to this war. A careful examination of the "Journal" and "Congressional Globe" shows that he voted for all measures of supply that came up, and for all actions in any way favorable to the officers, Soldiers and their families, who carried out through the war: with the exception that some of these measures passed without yeas and nays, leaving no record as to how particular men voted. The "Journal" and "Globe" also show him voting that the war was unnecessary and unconstitutional initiated by the President of the United States. This is the language of Mr. Ashmun's amendment, which Mr. Lincoln and nearly or quite all other Whigs of the House of Representatives voted.
Lincoln's reasons for the opinion by this vote were briefly that the President had sent General Taylor into an inhabited part of the country belonging to Mexico, not U.S. and this had led to the first act of hostility, in fact the beginning of the war, the place, being the neighboring country on the east bank of the Rio Grande, was inhabited by native Mexicans, born there under the Mexican government, and had never submitted, has not been conquered by Texas or the United States, or transferred through a treaty that although Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its border, Mexico had never recognized, nor Texas neither the United States had to meet was not a broad desert between that and the country in which Texas had actual control, the country where hostilities commenced, once belonged to Mexico, must remain so until it was somehow legally transferred, which had never been done.
Mr. Lincoln thought the act of sending an armed force among the Mexicans was unnecessary, since Mexico was in no way molesting or menacing the U.S. or the people thereof, and that was unconstitutional, because the power to make war is vested in Congress, not the President. He thought the main reason for the act was to divert public attention from the delivery of the "Fifty-four forty or fight" to Great Britain over the Oregon boundary question.
Mr. Lincoln was not a candidate re-election. This was determined and declared before going to Washington, under an agreement between the Whig friends, by which Colonel Hardin and Colonel Baker had each previously served a single term in the same district.
In 1848, during his tenure in Congress, advocated the nomination of General Taylor to the presidency, as opposed to all others, and also took an active part of his election after his nomination, speaking a few times in Maryland near Washington, on several occasions in Massachusetts, and canvassing quite fully his own district in Illinois, which was followed by a majority in the district of more than 1500 for General Taylor.
On his return to the Congress was the practice of law in earnest than ever. In 1852 he went to the post electoral Scott, and did something in the way of canvassing, but owing to the hopelessness of the cause in Illinois he did less than in previous presidential canvasses.
In 1854, occupation was almost overcome the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been before.
In the fall that year, he took the stump with no practical aim or object larger than that of ensuring, if possible, the reelection of Hon. Richard Yates to Congress. His speeches at once attracted a more marked than it ever had before. As the counting proceeded was attracted by the different parts of the state outside the district Mr. Yates. He did not abandon the law, but gave his attention turns to that and politics. The State Fair of agriculture was in Springfield that year, and Douglas was announced to speak there.
In the poll of 1856, Mr. Lincoln made speeches fifty, none of which, as he recalls, was placed on the printing. One of them was held in Galena, but Mr. Lincoln has no recollection of any part of it being printed, nor remember whether in that speech said anything about a Supreme Court decision. You may have spoken on this subject, and some newspapers may have reported him saying that what is now attribute, but believes it could not have expressed himself as represented.
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