when the place was laid out. Three years later, the inhabitants then numbering less than 30, Lancaster was chosen as the capital of Nebraska, and its name changed to Lincoln in honor of Abraham Lincoln. Consult Hayes and Cox, History of the City of Lincoln (Lincoln, Neb., 1889).
LINCOLN. A city and the county-seat of Lincoln County, Kan., about 150 miles west of Topeka; on the Saline River, and on the Union Pacific Railroad. It has fine school and county buildings, and is the seat of the Kansas Christian College, opened in 1882. The city carries on a considerable trade in grain, produce, live stock, etc., and there are grain-elevators and flour-mills, and extensive quarries of fine limestone. Population, in 1890, 1100; in 1900, 1262.
LINCOLN, Abraham (1809-65). The sixteenth President of the United States, born in Hardin County, Ky., February 12, 1809. His ancestry has been with some difficulty traced back to Samuel Lincoln, of Norwich, England, who emigrated to America and settled in Hingham, Mass., in 1638. Some of his descendants, who were Quakers, settled in Amity Township, N. J., and finally in Rockingham County, Va. The Virginia Lincolns are described as “reputable and well-to-do.” One of them, the President's grandfather, removed to Jefferson County, Ky. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, a carpenter by trade, was ignorant and thriftless. He married Nancy Hanks, who seems to have belonged to an obscure family, but herself to have been a woman of noble character. After several removals in Kentucky, Thomas Lincoln went in 1816 to Indiana. At the new home his wife died after two years, when Abraham was not quite eight years old, and a year later he married Mrs. Sally (Bush) Johnson, whom he had formerly courted. All Abraham's schooling combined would probably not have made up more than one year. As he grew up, however, he had access to a few books which he read and reread—the Bible, Shakespeare, Æsop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, a history of the United States, and Weems's Washington. He seems to have been ambitious from the outset, trying hard to learn, but much influenced by the coarseness of his surroundings, from the externals of which he never got quite free. He grew to be six feet four inches in height; marvelous tales are told of his strength, and much more credible ones of his laziness, skill at jesting and story-telling, and popularity.
When Abraham was twenty-one his father's migratory nature impelled him to try his fortunes in Illinois, and he settled on the north fork of the Sangamon, which empties into the Illinois. Here the younger Lincoln helped to split rails and to clear and plant some fifteen acres. In 1831, with two relatives, he took a flatboat to New Orleans, whither he had made a previous trip. Ten years later he went to New Orleans again. These trips enabled him to see the true nature of slavery. In 1832 Lincoln was chosen captain of a company of volunteers for service in the Black Hawk War. They saw no fighting and were mustered out within five weeks, when Lincoln reënlisted as a private, serving until June 16th. He then returned to Sangamon, making his abode at the little mushroom town of New Salem, and, having announced his candidacy for the State Legislature, he began electioneering vigorously. With great humor and with an energy not always confining itself to strict argument, he advocated pure Whig doctrine—a national bank, internal improvements, and a protective tariff. The follower of Clay was beaten by the Jacksonian Democrats, but be had gained experience and had spread his popularity. His next venture was as a partner in a dry-goods and grocery store at New Salem, but the concern failed, the partner fled, and Lincoln was left to settle the losses. He paid all he owed in 1849. Having no gift for trade, he now began to read law, studied hard, and made swift headway. In May, 1833, he was appointed postmaster at New Salem, and is said to “have carried the post-office in his hat,” for the mail came but once a week. This position he held three years. In 1834 Lincoln's personal properly was about to be sold by the sheriff to satisfy a judgment, when a new friend, Bolin Greene, bid in the property and gave it over to him. In 1834 he was again a candidate for the Legislature, and was elected, running far ahead of his ticket. He was rather an observer than an active legislator in this session.
Lincoln's first love was unhappy. While boarding with James Rutledge, in New Salem, he became enamored of Ann, his landlord's daughter, a well-reared girl of seventeen. She had at the time another lover, who promised marriage, but he broke his word. Lincoln and Ann Rutledge were betrothed in 1835, but the girl fell ill, and in August she died of brain fever.
In 1836 Lincoln was again a candidate for the Legislature on the following characteristic platform: “I go for all sharing the privilege of the Government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the rights of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.” Lincoln stumped the district, and by his vigorous speeches won a Whig victory. In the Presidential contest of 1836 Lincoln was for Hugh L. White of Tennessee. In the struggle of Jackson against the United States Bank and the shifting policy of Van Buren he had no interest, but he heeded his duties as a legislator, and began that anti-slavery record upon which so much of his fame will ever rest. The abolitionists were in the highest activity. Garrison's Liberator was intensely annoying to the upholders of slavery. President Jackson had at the close of 1835 invited the attention of Congress to the circulation through the mails of what were then called ‘inflammatory’ documents. Henry Clay, Edward Everett, many of the Governors of the Northern States, and a large majority of the House of Representatives strenuously opposed the agitation of the slavery question; all petitions to Congress on the subject were laid on the table without reading or debate, and all possible means were taken to prevent the discussion of the hateful subject. On the night of November 7, 1837, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was mobbed and shot dead at Alton, Ill., for persisting in publishing an abolition newspaper.
At this juncture, when the Legislature was about to pass resolutions deprecating the anti-slavery agitation, Lincoln presented his protest, to which he could get but one signer besides himself. Herein he declares slavery to be founded on injustice and bad policy; but he avers that abolition agitation tends to increase slavery's
