Lincoln

David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a stunningly original portrait of Lincoln's life and presidency. Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln's gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever- expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln's character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so unprepared for the presidency to become a great moral leader. In the most troubled of times, here was a man who led the country out of slavery and preserved a shattered Union -- in short, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen. From Publishers Weekly Pulitzer prize winner Donald's biography was a PW bestseller for 11 weeks. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, most recently for Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe (LJ 12/86), Donald proves himself the superb biographer of Lincoln, though two recent biographies, Michael Burlingame's The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (LJ 4/1/94) and Merrill Peterson's Lincoln in American Memory (LJ 10/1/94), are both important studies. Donald's profile of the 16th president focuses entirely on Lincoln, seldom straying from the subject. It looks primarily at what Lincoln "knew, when he knew it, and why he made his decisions." Donald's Lincoln emerges as ambitious, often defeated, tormented by his married life, but with a remarkable capacity for growth?and the nation's greatest president. What really stands out in a lively narrative are Lincoln's abilities to hold together a nation of vastly diverse regional interests during the turmoil and tragedy of the Civil War. Donald's biography will appeal to all readers and will undoubtedly corral its share of book awards. Highly recommended for all libraries.?Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Lib., Ala. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. LINCOLNBy David Herbert DonaldSimon & SchusterCopyright © 1995 DAVID HERBERT DONALD.All rights reserved.ISBN: 0-684-80846-3CHAPTER ONE Annals of the Poor Abraham Lincoln was not interested in his ancestry. In his mindhe was a self-made man, who had no need to care about his family tree. In1859,f when friends asked him for autobiographical information to helpbarest outline of his family history: "My parents were both born in Virginia,of undistinguished families - second families, perhaps I should say: Thenext year, when John Locke Scripps of the Chicago Tribune proposed towrite his campaign biography. Lincoln told him: "Why Scripps, ... it is agreat piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of early life. It canall be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence you will find inGray's Elegy. The short and simple annals of the poorThat's my life, and that's all you or any one can make of it" I Lincoln knew almost nothing about his mother's family, the Hankses, whomoved from Virginia to Kentucky about 1780. They were a prolific tribe, forthe most part illiterate but respectable farmers of modest means. Theirtended to name all the males James of John, and the females Polly, Lucy, orNancy. Abraham Lincoln's mother was one of at least eight Nancy Hanksesborn during the 1780s. Abraham Lincoln believed that his mother was illegitimate.It was a subject that he rarely discussed, but in the early 1850s, whiledriving his one-horse buggy from Springfielf over to Petersburg, Illinois, hefound himself talking about it. He and his law partner, William H. Herndon,were about to try a case in Menard County court that involved a questionof hereditary traits, and Lincoln observed that illegitimate children were"oftentimes sturdict and brighter than those born in lawful wedlock" Toprove his point he mentioned his mother, who he was "the illegitimatedaughter of Lucy Hanks and a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter." From"this broad-minded, unknown Virginia" Lincoln believed he inherited thetraits that distinguished him from the other members of his family ambition,mental alertness, and the power analysis. Lincoln may well have been correct in reporting that his mother was bornout of wedlock. A grand jury in Mercer County, Kentucky, presented a chargeof furnication against his grandmother Lucy (or "Lucey," as it is spelled inthe old records), and there were several recorded instances of bastardyamong Hanks women of her generation. Since no wedding certificate wasever found for Lucy. there was room for endless speculation about Lincoln'smaternal grandsire. But Lincoln's remark - if Herndon accurately reported them after a lapseof many years - were not based on any research into his Hanks ancestry.Instead they reflected his sense that he was different from the people whom hegrew up. Like other gifted young men, he wondered how he couldbe the offspring of his ordinary and limited parnts. Some in Lincoln'sgeneration fancied themselved the sons of the daupline, who allegedly fledto America during the French Revolution. Lincoln imagined a noble Virginiaancestor. Of his Lincoln ancestor he knew only a little more that he did about theHankses. From his father he learned than his grandfather Abraham, for whomhe was named, had move from Virginia was on the early 1780sThere was a vague family tradition that earlier Lincolns had lived inPennsylvania, where they had been Quakers, but as he recorded, the family hadlong since "fallen away from the popular habits." Apart fromthat, William Dean Howells reported in his 1860 campaign biography, therewas only "incertitude, and absolute darkness" about Abraham Lincoln's fore-bears. Further research would have showed that the Lincolns did come fromVirginia and that an earlier generation had indeed belonged to the Societyof Friends in Pennsylvania. In turns, these could be traced to the originalSamuel Lincoln, who emigrated from the County of Norfolk, England, andsettled in Hingham, Massachusetts. In 1937. A weaver in England, Samuelbecame a prosperous trader and businessman in America, where he have apillar of the church and begat eleven children who bore names like Daniel,Thomas, Mordecai, and Sarah, which became tradition in the family. Samuel'sgrandson, Mordecai (1686-1736), was perhaps the most successfulmember of the family. An ironmaster and wealthy handover in Pennsylvania,he was a member of the eighteenth, century economic and social elite,he married Hannah Slater, who was at once the daughter, the niece, and thegranddaughter of members of the New Jersey assembly and the niece of theacting royal governor of that colony. It was their son, John Lincoln (1710-1788), who moved to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he establishedhimself on a large farm in fertile Rockingham County. Mordecai wasso successful that he could afford to give his son, Abraham Lincoln's grandfather,210 acres of the best soil in Virginia. In sum, Abraham Lincoln, insteadof being the unique blossom on an otherwise barren family tree, belongedto the seventh American generation of a family with competent means, areputation for integrity, and a modest record of public service. IIA closer study of the historical records would also have given AbrahamLincoln a different, and probably a kindlier, view of his father, Thomas. Itwas Thoma's father, the senior Abraham Lincoln, who sold his farm inVirginia and led his wife and five children over the mountains to seek theirfortune. They had heard much of the rich lands in Kentucky from theirdistant relative, Daniel Boone, and they found in that vast, largely unsealedterritory, which was still part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, all theopportunities Boone had promised. Within a few years the Lincolns ownedat least 5,544 acres of land in the richest sections of Kentucky. But the wilderness was dangerous. In 1786, while Abraham Lincoln andhis three boys, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, were planting a cornfield ontheir new property, Indians attacked them. Abraham was killed instantly.Mordecai, at fifteen the oldest son, sent Josiah running to the settlement halfa mile away for help while he raced to a nearby cabin. Peering out of a crackbetween logs, he saw an Indian sneaking out of the forest toward his eightyear-old brother, Thomas, who was still sitting in the field beside theirfather's body. Mordecai picked up a rifle, aimed at a silver pendant on theIndian's chest, and killed him before he could reach the boy. This story inlater years Thomas Lincolnm repeated over and over again, so that it became,as Abraham said, "the legend more strongly than all others imprinted uponmy mind and memory." Both Thomas Lincoln and his son seem to have overlooked the economicconsequences of the tragedy. According to Virginia law, which prevailed inthe Kentucky region, the ancient rule of primogeniture was still in effect,and Mordecai Lincoln, the oldest son, inherited his father's entire estatewhen he came of age. In due course he became one of the leading citizensof Washington County, Kentucky, a man of considerable property, who wasinterested in breeding fine racehorses. The only Lincoln relative whomAbraham Lincoln ever knew, Mordecai was a man of considerable wit andgreat natural gifts, and his nephew once remarked that "Uncle Mord hadrun off with all the talents of the family." He had also, in effect, run off withall the money. Left without a patrimony, the other two Lincoln boys had tofend for themselves. Thomas, the youngest, had a difficult time. The tragedy abruptly endedhis prospects of being an heir of a well-to-do Kentucky planter, he had toearn his board and keep. Abraham Lincoln never fully understood how hardhis father had to struggle during his early years. It required an immenseeffort for Thomas, who earned three shillings a day for manual labor ormade a little more when he did carpentry or cabinetmaking, to accumulateenough money to buy his first, a 23H-acre tract on Mill Creek inHardin County, Kentucky. He became a familiar in Elizabethtown andHogdenville, a stocky, well-built man of no more than average height, witha shock of straight black hair and an unusually large nose. "He was anuneducated man, a plain unpretending plodding man," a neighbor remembered;one who "attended to his work, peaceable - quiet and good natured.""Honest" was the adjective most frequently used to describe ThomasLincoln, and he was respected in his community, where he served in themilitia and was called for jury duty. Never wealthy, Thomas owned a respectableamount of property, by 1814 ranking fifteenth (out of ninety-eightlisted) in the county. In 1806 he married Nancy Hanks, and the couple built a little house inElizabethtown, where eight months later Sarah, their first daughter, wasborn. By 1809, Thomas Lincoln had bough another farm, this time one ofthree hundred acres, on the south fork of North Creek (not far from Hogdenville).It was called the Sinking Spring Farm, because it had a magnificentspring that bubbled from the bottom of a deep cave. Here, on a little knollnear the spring, he built a one-room log cabin, measuring sixteen by eighteenfeet. The sturdy building, which had only a dirt floor and no glasswindow, was as large as about 90 percent of the pioneer cabins of theregion. Here Abraham Lincoln was born on February 2, 1809. He had no recollectionof the power of his birth, because his parents moved before he wastwo years old. The land on the Sinking Spring Farm proved very poor, "abarren waste, so to speak," as one contemporary described it, "save somelittle patches on the creek bottoms," and Thomas quickly learned that itwould not support his family. He bought a smaller but more fertile farm,some ten miles to the northeast, on Knob Creek Here, once again, the family lived, as did most of their neighbors, in aone-room log cabin, but the setting was beautiful. The creek, which ranthrough the property, was so clear that you could see a pebble in ten feet ofwater; the bottomland, where Thomas planted corn, was rich and easy tocultivate; and on both sides rose small, sleep hills, so clearly defined andseparate as to be called "knobs" - after which the creek was named. It was of this Knob Creek farm that Abraham Lincoln had his earliestmemories, but few of them concerned his mother, who remains a shadowyimage. It is not even clear what she looked like. No one ever bothered todraw a likeness of Nancy Hanks Lincoln and the age of photography was farin the future. Many years later those who had known her described hervariously as being tall or of average height, thin or stout, beautiful or plain.Most agreed that she was "brilliant" or "intellectual." According to tradition,she was able to read, but, like many other frontier women, she did not knowhow to write and had to sign legal documents with an X. Abraham musthave remembered how his mother set up housekeeping, cooked the familymeals, washed and mended the scanty clothing that her husband and childrenwore, and perhaps helped in the farming. But of her life on KnobCreek he recorded only that she gave birth to a third child, named Thomas,who died in infancy. On the rare occasions in later years when he mentionedher, he referred to his "angle mother," partly recognition of her lovingaffection, but partly to distinguish her from his stepmother, who was verymuch alive. If he ever said, as Herndon, reported, "God bless my mother, allthat I am or ever hope to be I owe to her," it was a tribute not so much toher maternal care as to the genes that she allegedly transmitted from hisunnamed grandfather. Lincoln's Knob Creek recollections were of working in what he called"the big held," of seven acres, where is father planted corn and the sonfollowed, dropping two pumpkin seeds in every hill on every otherrow. Once, as he remembered, there was a big rain in the hills, though nota drop fell in the valley, and "the water coming down through the gorgeswashed ground, corn, pumpkin seed and all clear off the field." He alsoremembered going for two brief periods to an "A.B.C. school," some twomiles from the Lincolns' cabin, where he was sent, according to a relative,"more as company for his sister that with the expectation that he wouldlearn much." It was first taught by one Zachariah Riney, about whom little isknown except that he was a Catholic, and then by Caleb Hazel, who accordingto a contemporary, "could perhaps teach spelling, reading and indifferentwriting and perhaps could cipher to the rule of three, but had noother qualifications of a teacher, except large size and bodily strength tothrash any boy or youth that came to his school." Abraham probably masteredthe alphabet, but he did not yet know how to write when the familyleft Kentucky. In general, young Lincoln seems to have been an entirely average littleboy, who enjoyed playing, hunting, and fishing. Perhaps he was quieter thanhis playmates and kept his clothes clean longer, but there was not much todistinguish him. As a relative declared, "Abe exhibited no special train inKentucky except a good kind - somewhat wild nature." IIIIn 1816, when Abraham was only seven years old, the Lincolns moved acrossthe Ohio River to Indiana. Many years later he stated, quite accurately, thathis father left Kentucky "partly on account of slavery; but chiefly on accountof the difficulty in land titles in Ky." In Thomas Lincoln's mind the twocauses were interrelated. He had religious grounds for disliking slavery. Heand his wife joined the Separate Baptist Church, whose memebers acceptedtraditional Baptist beliefs, like infant baptism and predestination, but refusedto endorse any formal creed. Adhering to a very strict code of morality,which condemned profanity, intoxication, gossip, horse racing, and dancing,most of the Separate Baptists were opposed to slavery. Abraham shared hisparents' views. He was "naturally anti-slavery," he remarked in 1864, adding,"I cannot remember when l did not so think, and feel." Thomas Lincoln's hostility to slavery was based on economic ase well asreligious grounds. He did not want to compete with slave labor. Kentuckyhad been admitted to the Union in 1792 as a slave state, and in the central,bluegrass region of the state "nabobs" were accumulating vast holdings ofthe best lands, tilled by gangs of black slaves. Hardin County, just to thewest of this region, was not so well suited to large scale agriculture, but itsinhabitants felt threatened. By 1811 the county had 1,007 slaves and only1,627 white males over the age of sixteen. Small farmers like Thomas Lincoln also worried about the rights to theirland. Kentucky never had a United States land survey, it was settled in arandom, chaotic fashion, with settlers fixing their own bounds to the propertythey claimed: a particular tree here, a rock there, and so on. Soon themap of the state presented a bewildering overlay of conflicting land claims,and nobody could be sure who owned what. So uncertain were land titlesthat Kentucky became one of the first states to do away with the freeholdproperty qualification for voting - not so much out of devotion to democraticprinciples as because even the wealthy often had trouble proving theyowned clear title to their acres. Naturally the courts were filled with litigation,and the lawyers in Kentucky were busy all the time. To a small farmer likeThomas Lincoln, who was unable to pay the attorneys' fees, it seemed thatthey were all working for the rich, slaveholding planters. He had trouble gaining a clear title to any of the three farms that hepurchased in Kentucky. The details were exceedingly complicated, and notparticularly important: one had been improperly surveyed, so that it provedto be thirty eight acres smaller than what he thought he had purchased;another had a lien on it because of a small debt by a previous owner; in thecase of the Knob Creek farm, non-Kentucky residents brought suit againstThomas and other occupants of the rich valley, claiming prior title. Havingneither the money nor the inclination to fight for his claims in court, heheard with great interest of the opening of Indiana, territory from whichslavery had been excluded by the Northwest Ordinance. Here the UnitedStates government had surveyed the land and offered purchasers guaranteedtitles to their farm. In the fall of 1816 he made a trip across the Ohio to explore the regionand stake out a claim. He found what he wanted in the heavily wooded,almost totally unoccupied wilderness on Pigeon Creek, in Perry (later Spencer)County, In southern Indiana. After selecting the site, he constructedwhat was called a "half-faced camp," a rough shelter, with no floor, aboutfourteen feet square, enclosed on three sides but open on the fourth. Then,blazing trees to mark boundaries and heaping piles of brush on thecorners of the tract he expected to occupy; he returned to Kentucky, gatheredhis small family and his few possession, and set out for his new home.The Lincolns arrived in Indiana just as the territory was admitted to theunion as a state. The land Thomas claimed was in unbroken forest, so remote that forpart of the distance from the Ohio there was no trail and he had to Hackout a path so that his family could follow. It was wild region, Abrahamremembered, and the forests were filled with bears and other threateninganimals. Many years later, when he revisited the region, his childhood fearssurfaced in verse: When first my father settled here, "t'was then the frontier line. The panther's scream, filled night with fear And bears preyed on the swine.The Lincolns stayed in the half-faced camp for a few days after they arrived,until Thomas, probably with the assistance of members of the otherfamilies, but because of the freezing weather the men could not work upthe usual mixture of clay and grass for chinking between the logs and thewinds still swept through. The family was able to get through the winter because they are deer andbear meat. "We all hunted pretty much all the time," one of the partyremembered. Young Abraham did his part, too. In February 1817, just beforehis eight birthday, he spied a flock of wild turkeys outside the new logcabin. He seized a rifle and, taking advantage of one the chinks, "shotthrough a crack, and killed one of them." But killing was not for him, andhe did not try to repeat his exploit. Recalling the incident years later, he saidthat he had "never since pulled a trigger on any larger game." The immediate task before the Lincolns was to clear away enough treesand undergrowth so that they could plant corn Thomas could only do somuch, and he had to enlist the services of his own. Though Abraham wasonly eight years old, he was, he recalled, "large of his age, and had an axeput into his hands at once; and from that till within his twentythird year, hewas almost constantly handling that most useful instrument - less, of course,in plowing and harvesting seasons." That first year in Indiana was a time of backbreaking toil and of desperateloneliness for all the family, but by fall they fairly settled Thomas wasso satisfied with the site that he had chosen that he undertook the sixty-miletrip to Vincennes in order to make initial payments on two adjoining eight-acretracts he had claimed. Nancy also began to feel more at home, becauseElizabeth (Hanks) and Thomas Sparrow, her aunt and uncle, who had losttheir home in Kentucky through an ejectment suit, came to the Pigeon Creekneighborhood. They stayed for a while in the Lincolns' half faced camp untilthe could build their own cabin a nearby lot. Sarah and Abraham rejoicedbecause the Sparrows brought with them the eighteen-year-old DennisHanks, illegitimate nephew of Elizabeth Sparrow. They had knownDennis on Kentucky - indeed, he claimed to be the second person to touchAbraham after his birth - and they welcomed this young man of endlessloquacity and irrepressible good spirits. But shortly afterward everything began to go wrong. First, Abraham hada dangerous accident. One of his chores was to take corn to Gordon'smill, some two miles distant, to be ground into meal. When he got there, hehitched his old mare to the arm of the gristmill. Because it was getting lateand he was in a hurry to get home before dusk, he tried to speed up themare by giving her a stroke of the whip with each revolution. She lashedout at him with a kick that landed on his forehead, and he fell bleeding andunconcious. At first it was though that he was dead and his father wassummoned. He could not speak for several hours, but he revived sufferedno permanent damage. Then the Pigeon Creek community was devastated buy an attack of whatwas called milk sickness (more properly, brucellosis). It was a mysteriousailment, which settlers realized was somehow connected with the milk oftheir cows, but it was not until many years later scientists discoveredthat the cows, which ran wild in the forest, had been eating the luxuriantbut polsonous white snakeroot plant. Dizziness, nausea, and stomach painswere the initial symptoms, followed by irregular respiration and pulse, prostration,and coma. Death usually occurred within seven days. Thomas andElizabeth Sparrow were first afflicted, and Thomas Lincoln saved roughboards to make coffins to bury them in. Then Nancy fell ill. She struggledon, day after day, for a week, but she knew she was falling. Calling herchildren to her bedside, she "told them to be good and kind to their father- to one an other and to the world," she died on October 5, and ThomasLincoln buried another coffin on a wooded knoll a quarter fo a mile fromthe cabin. The next year may have been the hardest in Abraham Lincoln's life. Withthe help of Dennis Hanks, who moved in with the Lincolns after the Sparrowsdied, Thomas was able to put food on the table. "We still kept uphunting and farming." Dennis remembered. "We always hunted[;] it madeno difference what came, for we more or less depended on it for a living- nay for life." Sarah, who had her twelfth birthday in February 1819, tried tocook and keep house, but at times she felt so lonesome that she would sitby the fire and cry. To cheer her up, Dennis recalled, "me `n' Abe got `er ababy croon an' a turtle, an' tried to get a fawn but we couldn't ketch any." Abe - as Dennis and the other children insisted on calling the boy, eventhough he always disliked the nickname - left no words describing his senseof loss. His wound was too sensitive to touch. But many years later he wrotea letter of condolence to a bereaved child: "In this sad world of ours, sorrowcomes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony; because ittakes them unawares ... I have had experience enough to know what I say." Deeper consequences of the loss of his mother before he was elevenyears old can only be a matter of speculation it is tempting to connecthis subsequent moodiness, his melancholy, and his occasional boots ofdepression to his cause, but the connections are not clear and these patternsof behavior appear in persons who have never experienced such loss. Perhapshis mother's death had something to do with his growing aversion tocruelry and bloodshed. Now, he began to reprove other children in theneighborhood for senseless cruelry to animals. He scolded them when theycaught terrapins and heaped hot coals on their shells, to force the defenseless animals out of their shells, reminding them "that an ant's life was to itas sweet as ours to us. "Certainly the death to his mother, coming so soonafter the deaths of other friends and neighbors, gave a gloomy cast to hismemories of his Indiana home. In the 1840s, revisiting his old neighborhood,he recorded his thoughts in verse: My childhood's home I see again. And sadden with the view: And still, as mem'ries crowd my brain, There's pleasure it too I range the fields with pensive tread, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) I'm living in the tombs. IV Within a year of Nancy's death, Thomas Lincoln recognized that be and hisfamily could not go on alone, and he went back to Kentucky to seek a bridein Elizabethrown he found Sarah Bush Johnston, whom he had perhapsunsuccessfully courted before he wed Nancy. She was the widow of theHardin County jailer and mother of three small children. There was no timefor a romantic engagement; he needed a wife and she needed a husband.They made a quick, businesslike arrangement for him to pay her debts andfor her to pack up her belongings and move with him to Indiana. The arrival of Sarah Lincoln marked a turning point in Abraham Lincoln'slife. she brought with her, first, her collection of domestic possessionscomfortable bedding, a walnut bureau that bad cost her forty-five dollars,table and chairs, a spinning wheel, knives, forks, and spoons, so that theLincoln children a felt they were joining a world of unbelievable luxury. Herchildren - Elizabeth John D., and Matilda, who ranged from nine to fiveyears in age, brought life and excitement to the depressed Lincoln family.But most of all she brought with her the gift of love. Sarah Bush Lincolnmust have been touched to see the dirty, ill-clad, hungry Lincoln children,and she set to work once, as she said, to make them look "more human.""She soaped - rubbed and washed the children clean," Dennis Hanks remembered,"so that they look[ed] pretty neat - well and clean." At her suggestion, the whole household was reorganized. Thomas Lincolnand Dennis Hanks had to give up hunting for a while to split logs and makea floor for the cabin, and they finished the roof, constructed a proper door,and cut a hole for a window, which they covered with greased paper. Thecabin was high enough to install a loft, reached by climbing pegs driven intothe wall, and here she installed beds for the three boys - Dennis Hanks,Abraham, and John D. Downstairs she had the whole cabin cleaned, a decentbedstead was built, and Thomas used his skill as a carpenter to make anothertable and stools. Remarkably, these reforms were brought about with aminimum of friction. What was even more extraordinary, Sarah Bush Lincoln was able to blendthe two families harmoniously and without jealousy. She treated her ownchildren and the Lincoln children with absolute impartiality. She grew especiallyfond of Abraham. "Abe never gave me a cross word or look and neverrefused in fact, or even in appearance, to do anything, I requested him," sheremembered. "I never gave him a cross word in all my life.... His mind andmine - what little I had [-] seemed to move together - move in the samechannel." Many years later, attempting to compare her son and her stepson,she told an interviewer: "Both were good boys, but I must say - both nowbeing dead that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect to see." Starved for affection, Abraham returned her love. He called her "Mama,"and he never spoke of her except in the most affectionate terms. After hehad been elected President, he recalled the sorry condition of ThomasLincoln's household before Sarah Bush Johnston arrived and told of theencouragement she had given him as a boy. "She had been his best friendin this world," a relative reported him as saying, "and ... no man could lovea mother more than he loved her." V The years after Sarah Bush Lincoln came to Indiana were happy ones foryoung Abraham. Afterward, when he spoke of this time, it was as "a joyous,happy boyhood," which he described "with mirth and glee," and in hisrecollections "there was nothing sad nor pinched, and nothing of want." Hisparents enrolled him, along with the other four children in household,in the school that Andrew Crawford had opened in a cabin about a milefrom the Lincoln house. Though Sarah Bush Lincoln was illiterate, she hada sense that education was important, and Thomas wanted his son to learnhow to read and cipher. Possibly young Lincoln knew how to read a little before he enteredCrawford's school, but Dennis Hanks, who was only marginally literate himself,claimed credit for giving Abraham "his first lesson in spelling - readingand writing." "I thought Abe to write with a buzzards quill which I killed witha rifle and having made a pen - put Abes hand in mind [sic] and moving hisfingers by my hand to give him the idea of how to write." Abraham learnedthese basic skills slowly. John Hanks, another cousin who lived with theLincolns for a time, thought he was "somewhat dull ... not a brilliant boy-butworked his way by toil: to learn was hard for him, but he worked slowly,but surely." But Abraham's stepmother understood him better, recognizedhis need fully to master what he read or heard. "He must understand everything- even to the smallest thing - minutely and exactly," she remembered"he would then repeat it over to himself again and again - some times inone form and then in an other and when it was fixed in his mind to sun himbe ... never lost that fact or his understanding of it." Abraham attended Crawford's school for one term, of perhaps threemonths. Crawford, a justice of the peace and man of some importance inthe area, ran a subscription school, where parents paid their children'stuition in cash or in commodities. Ungraded, it was a "blab" school, wherestudents recited their lessons aloud, and the schoolmaster listened throughthe din for errors. He was long remembered because, according to onestudent, "he tried to learn us manners" by having the pupils practice introducingeach other, as though they were strangers. After one term Crawfordgave up teaching, and the Lincoln children had no This Fully Rounded Biography Of America's Sixteenth President Is The Product Of Donald's Half-century Of Study Of Lincoln And His Times. In Preparing It, Donald Has Drawn More Extensively Than Any Previous Writer On Lincoln's Personal Papers And Those Of His Contemporaries, And He Has Taken Full Advantage Of The Voluminous Newly Discovered Records Of Lincoln's Legal Practice. He Presents His Findings With The Same Literary Skill And Psychological Understanding Exhibited In His Previous Biographies, Which Have Received Two Pulitzer Prizes... Much More Than A Political Biography, Donald's Lincoln Reveals The Development Of The Future President's Character And Shows How His Private Life Helped To Shape His Public Career. In Donald's Skillful Hands, Lincoln Emerges As A Youthful, Vigorous President. One Of The Youngest Men Ever To Occupy The White House, He Was Also The Husband Of An Even Younger Wife And The Father Of Boisterous Children. We Witness How Lincoln's Absorption With Politics Disrupted His Family Life, And How His Often Tumultuous Marriage Affected His Political Career. And We See A Man Renowned For His Storytelling And His Often Sidesplitting Humor Lapse Into The Periods Of Deep Melancholy To Which He Was Prone, Not Only During The Dark Days Of The Civil War But Throughout His Life... Donald's Strikingly Original Portrait Of Lincoln Depicts A Man Who Was Basically Passive By Nature, Who Confessed That He Did Not Control Events But Events Had Controlled Him. Yet Coupled With That Fatalism Was An Unbounded Ambition That Drove Him To Take Enormous Political Risks And Enabled Him To Overcome Repeated Defeats. Donald Shows That Lincoln Was A Master Of Ambiguity And Expediency--but He Also Stresses That Lincoln Was A Great Moral Leader, Inflexibly Opposed To Slavery And Absolutely Committed To Preserving The Union.--book Jacket. Annals Of The Poor -- A Piece Of Floating Driftwood -- Cold, Calculating, Unimpassioned Reason -- Always A Whig -- Lone Star Of Illinois -- At The Head Of His Profession In This State -- There Are No Whigs -- A House Divided -- The Taste Is In My Mouth -- An Accidental Instrument -- A People's Contest -- The Bottom Is Out Of The Tub -- An Instrument In God's Hands -- A Pumpkin In Each End Of My Bag -- What Will The Country Say! -- A New Birth Of Freedom -- The Greatest Question Ever Presented To Practical Statesmanship -- It Was Not Best To Swap Horses -- I Am Pretty Sure-footed -- With Charity For All -- I Will Take Care Of Myself. David Herbert Donald. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [600]-686) And Index.