02 February 2009
Groundwork for Greatness: Abraham Lincoln to 1854
The early Lincoln before his public career
This article is excerpted from Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 5.48 MB).
By: Douglas L. Wilson
Douglas L. Wilson is co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College and the author of Lincoln Before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years.
Abraham Lincoln is the best-known and most widely acclaimed of all Americans, and the only American statesmen whose life story is generally familiar. Lincoln’s status as the quintessential self-made man and his legendary rise from obscure backwoods beginnings to the presidency are deeply ingrained in the American imagination. What Americans generally know about their 16th president is admittedly more legend than biography, but the outlines of this familiar story are, for the most part, historical.
Lincoln was born in 1809 in a log cabin to very humble, uneducated parents; he did grow up in a backwoods settlement that was virtually a wilderness; there, beginning at the age of seven, he did help his father to hew a farm out of that wilderness with an axe; with the benefit of only a few months of schooling, he did study diligently on his own to acquire basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic; as a young man out on his own and working at menial jobs, he did teach himself from books such subjects as English grammar, sufficient mathematics to learn surveying, and enough law to enter the legal profession at the age of 27. And, of course, he did perform triumphantly in the United States’ most severe crisis, saving his country from dissolution, presiding over the destruction of slavery, and dying an authentic American martyr.
While Lincoln’s worldwide fame is a result of his decisive and statesman-like conduct as president during the great Civil War of 1861- 1865, the legend that surrounds him, and that Americans know so well, is anchored in familiar images from his early years — the poor Indiana frontiersman’s son with an axe in his hands, the boy in the log cabin reading by the firelight, the honest store clerk and village postmaster, the fearless newcomer who stands up to bullies, the self-taught surveyor with compass and chain, the diligent student preparing himself for the practice of law.
Not generally part of the popular legend, although crucial aspects of his development, are such things as the rational and keenly skeptical cast of his mind and the very real difficulties he had to contend with in his formative years.
A Mind Ripe for Learning
From the very beginning, Abraham Lincoln was different, and in a way that many of his neighbors — and especially his father — did not approve. Unlike almost everyone else he grew up with, Lincoln was intensely interested in words and meanings. He learned to read and write at a very early age, actively seeking out books to borrow and taking notes on what he read. To his father and most of his peers, this was regarded as little more than sloth, a way of avoiding his farm chores.
But Lincoln was encouraged in his studies by his stepmother, who later told Lincoln’s former law partner, William H. Herndon, that while the boy “didn’t like physical labor,” he was not lazy, but was “diligent for Knowledge — wished to Know and if pains and Labor would get it he was sure to get it.”
While his youthful reading has always been a prominent feature of the Lincoln legend, it was probably not as important in the long term as his writing. After Lincoln’s assassination, Herndon sought out and interviewed the president’s former Indiana neighbors, many of whom remembered that the young Lincoln had distinguished himself as a talented writer of essays and poems. And in the end, his writings would prove at least as important as his deeds, for they are among the most familiar, as well as the most influential, in all of American letters.
When he left home and struck out on his own at the age of 22, Lincoln settled in the small village of New Salem, Illinois, where he spent six eventful years. Unprepossessing in appearance, he was frequently described as gawky and ill-dressed, but the other residents soon discovered he had many assets. In addition to being intelligent and surprisingly well informed, he was unusually good-natured and friendly. He excelled in popular athletic contests such as running, jumping, and throwing weights; he was unusually strong and a nearly unbeatable wrestler; and though he did not drink, he was convivial and had great ability as a storyteller. He was thus well liked, and when the militia was called out to fight Indians during his first year in New Salem, he was elected captain of the local company. In recalling this honor many years later, he allowed that he had “not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction.”
Supporting himself with a variety of jobs, Lincoln studied assiduously during his New Salem years to make up for his lack of formal education, of which he remained painfully conscious all his life. Borrowing books wherever he could, he studied history and biography, and he displayed an eager appetite for literature, being particularly fond of Shakespeare and of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
Though raised in a Baptist and church-going family, he resisted making a religious commitment, and under the influence of such 18th-century rationalists as the Comte de Volney and Thomas Paine, Lincoln developed a skeptical view of basic Christian doctrines. If his childhood church-going did not implant religious belief, it did stimulate an early interest that would have lifelong consequences, namely, public speaking. Having entertained his playmates in backwoods Indiana with imitations of sermons and stump speeches, he now joined a New Salem debating society to develop his abilities as a speaker.
Early Politics
If Lincoln was not caught up in the religious fervor and sectarian disputes that characterized the frontier culture he grew up in, he did take an early interest in politics. As with most things he set his mind to, Lincoln soon proved himself a notably effective speaker, a talent directly related to his subsequent political success. Before his first year in New Salem was out, he declared himself a candidate for the state legislature, and this was to be, as he later said, “the only time I ever have been beaten by the people.”
When he ran again at the next election, he won handily, and served four successive terms. In his second term, in spite of being one of the youngest legislators, he was chosen as his Whig Party’s floor leader, an honor that reflected his effectiveness as a speaker, his energy, and his organizational and leadership abilities.
The character of Lincoln’s early politics is quite instructive. Coming of age at a time and place where enthusiastic supporters of the populist Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party were an overwhelming majority, Lincoln here again proved to be different, for he very early identified himself as “anti-Jackson” in politics. Clearly, he was attracted by the economic development measures favored by Jackson’s Whig opponents, such as government-sponsored banks and internal improvements. If Lincoln’s only aim in politics was to get elected to office, he had chosen the wrong party.
When he moved to New Salem, Lincoln continued to be surrounded by Jacksonian Democrats, though the issues dominating state legislature campaigns tended to be local rather than national. Nonetheless, it says much about the budding politician that Lincoln could get himself elected, and by a good margin, by a strongly Jacksonian electorate.
While campaigning for the legislature, Lincoln was encouraged by John Todd Stuart, a lawyer in the Illinois state capital of Springfield, to study for the bar. Lincoln, writing in the third person, later described how this was managed: “He borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and went at it in good earnest. He studied with nobody. He still mixed in the surveying to pay board and clothing bills. When the legislature met, the law books were dropped, but were taken up again at the end of the session.”
After receiving his law license two years later, Lincoln joined Stuart as a junior partner, moving to Springfield in 1837. Soon afterward, Stuart was elected to the U.S. Congress and sent to Washington, D.C., leaving Lincoln to manage the firm and learn how to practice law on his own. A few years later, Lincoln joined the firm of Stephen T. Logan, the leader of the Springfield bar. Lincoln’s preparation in the law was limited, Logan later recalled, “but he would get a case and try to know all there was connected with it; and in that way before he left this country, he got to be quite a formidable lawyer.”
Lincoln in Love
Lincoln’s friends and relatives seem to agree that he was never much interested in girls when growing up, but when he got to New Salem he fell in love with the tavern-keeper’s daughter, Ann Rutledge. Not long after they had become engaged, she was stricken with what was called “brain fever” and died within a few weeks. Already Lincoln’s mother had died quite suddenly when he was nine years old. These deaths may have contributed to the emotional turmoil that Lincoln now suffered. Alarmed friends feared that his excessive bereavement and despondency might end in suicide.
But slowly Lincoln recovered, and slightly more than a year later he was involved in another courtship, this time with Mary Owens, a well-educated and refined woman from a wealthy Kentucky family. We know from surviving letters that, having involved himself to the point of engagement, Lincoln decided that he did not love Mary Owens and hoped to avoid marriage by convincing her that he was unworthy. When she proved noncommittal, he finally felt honor-bound to propose, and much to his astonishment and chagrin, she turned him down. He confessed to a confidante: “Others have been made fools of by the girls; but this can never be with truth said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself.”
Less than a year later, he found himself involved with another Kentucky belle, this one even better educated, more refined, and from an even wealthier family — Mary Todd of Lexington. She had many suitors, but for reasons that are unclear, she set her sights on Lincoln. Again he decided in due course that he did not love Mary Todd and, attracted to someone else, wanted to end their relationship, but again, things were not so simple.
Another episode of melancholy followed. Lincoln wrote to his law partner in Washington: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.” Lincoln told his roommate, Joshua Speed, that he was not afraid of death, but “that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.” Lincoln recalled this remark 23 years later in the White House when he told Speed that, having authored the Emancipation Proclamation (freeing the African-American slaves in the rebellious Confederacy), he hoped he had finally done something for which he would be remembered.
Lincoln eventually recovered, and he and Mary Todd got back together. On November 4, 1842, to the surprise of their closest friends and relatives, they announced they were to be married the same day. That they were not a perfectly matched couple was well understood by their associates before the marriage, and their differences in upbringing and expectations soon made themselves felt. Lincoln did not know or care very much about appearances and proprieties, but his new wife did, and she had difficulty controlling her volatile temper when they disagreed. Raised in an aristocratic southern household, where slaves performed the menial tasks, the new Mrs. Lincoln was ill-suited to middle-class housekeeping. Lincoln’s political and legal careers required much travel. His time away from home — sometimes for weeks at a time — only deepened the domestic challenges. But the couple’s shared adoration of their children helped to create a lasting bond that grounded their growing family.
As a Member of Congress
At about the time of his marriage, Lincoln declined to run for a fifth term in the state legislature and began angling for election to the U.S. Congress. When he finally succeeded and took his seat in the House of Representatives in December 1847, the Mexican War was coming to a victorious conclusion, and Lincoln lost no time in joining other Whig members in attacking President James K. Polk for unconstitutionally provoking an unjust war for the purpose of acquiring new territory. This earned Lincoln considerable criticism back home, where the war was very popular.
Even as Lincoln contradicted his pro-war Democratic constituents on a matter of principle, he offended some of his fellow Whigs with his practicality. Even as many important Whigs favored their party’s dominant figure, Henry Clay, for the presidency in 1848, Lincoln instead supported the war hero General Zachary Taylor. Taylor had no political record or party connection, but Lincoln argued that the party had lost too many elections and needed, more than anything else, to win. Ironically, when Lincoln’s congressional term was over, the victorious Taylor ignored his recommendations for government appointments and denied Lincoln the one he sought for himself: head of the General Land Office.
As his brief congressional career ended, Lincoln returned to Illinois, his political ambitions frustrated and his energetic performance on behalf of his party unrewarded.
“Upon his return from Congress,” Lincoln would later write in a third-person narrative, “he went to the practice of the law with greater earnestness than ever before.” With this greater attention to his legal profession, Lincoln’s skill and reputation as a lawyer rose, and his firm gained a prominent position in the Illinois bar. He was “losing interest in politics,” he said of this period, and was interesting himself in other intellectual pursuits, such as the mastery of Euclid’s geometry.
But as the slavery issue heated up in the 1850s, Lincoln’s long-standing affinity for political controversy unexpectedly revived. “In 1854,” he wrote in his narrative, “his profession had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused him as he had never been before.”
