Lincoln, the Politician. T. Aaron Levy
of justice and the law of the land was speedily enforced. A malefactor who violated the statute against card playing, after imprisonment, turned his back on Kentucky, swearing "that it was the meanest country a white man ever got into."[4]
The pioneers of Kentucky had in a high degree the instinct of government, the passion for politics. Their sense of liberty was tempered by devotion to constitutional principles and reverence for the written law. The restless spirit of adventure was tamed by the potency of political responsibilities. At an early day, they displayed interest even in national problems. Their views were kindred to those of Virginia. Accustomed to restrain their own freedom, they did not favor the coercive measures of a distant, unknown, strong and centralized government.[5] The political policy of Washington was far from popular; that of Adams was odious.[6] The presidential contest between Adams and Jefferson agitated Kentucky. Discussions were frequent and widespread and even women participated. A pioneer boy was so elated over the triumph of Jefferson that, sitting in his chamber alone, he drank in cold water thirteen toasts in celebration of the triumphant event.[7]
It is probable that even in his infancy Lincoln listened at the fireside to many political controversies. In that case he heard doctrines advocated destructive of the national sovereignty, vitally hostile to those avowed and cherished by him in his public career. Traces of his early political surroundings on his vital convictions are hardly discernible. Lincoln became a national politician with little patience for the popular doctrine of State Sovereignty. He belonged to the Federal party by instinct. No American statesman was broader in his outlook of the general welfare. It is worthy of note that he passed his infancy in Kentucky; his boyhood and minority in Indiana, and a varied career in the State of Illinois. Not being the son of a single community or commonwealth, he did not look to any individual state with fullness of affection. He was a citizen of the Republic.
As early as 1790, an effort was made in Kentucky to promote the gradual abolition of slavery. The arrival of Clay strengthened this movement. Strong passions were aroused by the angry discussions that followed this futile endeavor. About 1810 the number of slaves increased perceptibly. The blighting effects of the institution soon began their revelation. Labor was deemed disgraceful and demeaning. The possession of slaves, not "high intellectual and moral endowments," became the test of social status. Almost everything was subordinate to the dominating institution.
Such, in general, was the state of society in Kentucky when Thomas Lincoln, in 1816, made his weary trail through tangled woodland to the wild forests of Spencer County, Indiana. He was one of the multitude discouraged with prospects in the Southern states. It was frequently the overbearing conduct of slaveholders, rather than hatred to slavery, that led the pioneer to leave the land of his nativity. Still it is amazing that the majority of these emigrants bore no resentment to the institution that provoked their removal, but became or remained vigorous advocates in maintaining its supremacy.[8]
Efforts have been made to account for Thomas Lincoln's movement by reason of his extreme hostility to slavery. Lamon indulges in a more prosaic explanation, stating that there were not more than fifty slaves in Hardin County; that it was practically a free community; that his more fortunate relatives in other parts of the State had no scruples to their ownership; that he was wanderer by nature gaining neither riches nor credit; and that a quarrel with a neighbor, whose nose he bit off, made him more anxious than ever to leave Kentucky.[9] Lincoln in his campaign biography remarks that this removal was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky.[10] Ida Tarbell even endeavors to make a sort of Abolitionist out of Thomas Lincoln. She quotes an old man, who claims that he was present at the wedding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, and that Tom Lincoln and Nancy and Sally Bush were steeped full of Jess Head's notions about the wrong of slavery and the rights of man, as explained by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.[11] If this were the fact, it is very strange that Thomas Lincoln never thereafter manifested any hatred of slavery during a long life. If Thomas Lincoln had been a zealous advocate of the rights of the black man, is it not stranger still that his son never even hinted at receiving the slightest impetus to anti-slavery opinions from his father? The long silence of Thomas, Abraham and Sally Bush Lincoln disproves the contention that Thomas Lincoln was a friend or champion of the enslaved, or that his views differed from the prevailing sentiment in regard to Abolitionism.
One incident looms up in the brief stay of Abraham in Kentucky. "I had been fishing one day," said Lincoln, "and caught a little fish which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and having always been told at home that we must be good to the soldiers, I gave him my fish."[12] This story strikingly displays the influence of his mother. Events were few in his early life, and made a correspondingly abiding impression.
Lincoln was seven years old when he passed beyond the borders of Kentucky. There he received the rudiments of an education from two nomadic teachers. At the time of his departure, caste feeling was beginning to dominate society in Kentucky, but Lincoln never showed any of its manifestations. "He was," says Frederick Douglas, "the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself of the difference of color, and I thought that all the more remarkable because he came from a state where there were black laws."[13]
No human mind would have selected Hardin County for the birthplace of the man who was to grapple with the most portentous problem in all American history. For the slavery question baffled the wisdom of the makers of the Constitution. It darkened the last hours of the stalwart statesmen, Webster, Clay and Calhoun. It tried and tested the endurance of this nation in a crisis of grave moment.
CHAPTER II
LINCOLN'S ENVIRONMENT IN INDIANA
The year that marked the advent of Indiana into national statehood, witnessed the humble and unheralded entrance of Thomas Lincoln and his family into Spencer County. The State was a haven for the pioneer of peaceable disposition. The danger of the Indian no longer haunted the land. Still life was a grim struggle, hewing the way through solid forests to reach the new home, cutting the trees to build the log cabin, patiently raising the first crop of corn. It took time to construct the trail and then the road. Yet with marvelous rapidity, these early settlers soon caused the church to appear, the schoolhouse and the hamlet.[14]
Party politics is largely the product of a settled community. When men are engrossed in establishing a home matters of national significance seem of little moment. The kitchen is more important to the log cabin than the parlor. So the most pressing problems of a pioneer settlement are those of local concern. Conventions and parties were unknown for some time. Any man could proclaim his candidacy for office. Voters were known as "Jones-men" or "Smith-men," after the candidate of their choice. The earliest manifestations of party spirit arose over the slavery question. Even under territorial government, delegates to Congress were called "Slavery" or "Anti-Slavery." During the canvass in which John Quincy Adams was selected as President, the Whig and Democratic parties were little recognized in Indiana. On election day, the workers shouted, "Here are Jackson tickets! Here are Clay!"[15] The defeat of Jackson hastened the growth of partisanship. With the introduction of party politics came resort to trickery in elections.[16]
Politics was a recreation to the early settler. When the newspaper was a luxury, when there were few forms of amusement, it was an indulgence as well as an educational influence to listen to the orator on the questions of the day. Politics was the school of the nation, and in it there were few truants.
The following incident illustrates a primitive political gathering. School was dismissed at the time of the militia election, and so the teacher took part in the festivities. A tin cup of whiskey was passed