Henry Ketcham - The Life of Abraham Lincoln

TO MY TWO OLDER BROTHERS, JOHN LEWIS KETCHAM,
AND WILLIAM ALEXANDER KETCHAM,
WHO UNDER ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
LOYALLY SERVED THEIR COUNTRY IN THE WAR
FOR THE PERPETUATION OF THE UNION AND THE
DESTRUCTION OP SLAVERY, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

The question will naturally be raised, Why should there be another Lifeof Lincoln? This may be met by a counter question, Will there ever be atime in the near future when there will not be another Life ofLincoln? There is always a new class of students and a new enrolment ofcitizens. Every year many thousands of young people pass from theGrammar to the High School grade of our public schools. Other thousandsare growing up into manhood and womanhood. These are of a differentconstituency from their fathers and grandfathers who remember the civilwar and were perhaps in it.

"To the younger generation," writes Carl Schurz, "Abraham Lincoln hasalready become a half mythical figure, which, in the haze of historicdistance, grows to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses indistinctness of outline and figure." The last clause of this remark ispainfully true. To the majority of people now living, his outline andfigure are dim and vague. There are to-day professors and presidents ofcolleges, legislators of prominence, lawyers and judges, literary men,and successful business men, to whom Lincoln is a tradition. It cannotbe expected that a person born after the year (say) 1855, couldremember Lincoln more than as a name. Such an one's ideas are made upnot from his remembrance and appreciation of events as they occurred,but from what he has read and heard about them in subsequent years.

The great mine of information concerning the facts of Lincoln's lifeis, and probably will always be, the History by his secretaries,Nicolay and Hay. This is worthily supplemented by the splendid volumesof Miss Tarbell. There are other biographies of great value. Specialmention should be made of the essay by Carl Schurz, which is classic.

The author has consulted freely all the books on the subject he couldlay his hands on. In this volume there is no attempt to write a historyof the times in which Lincoln lived and worked. Such historical eventsas have been narrated were selected solely because they illustratedsome phase of the character of Lincoln. In this biography the singlepurpose has been to present the living man with such distinctness ofoutline that the reader may have a sort of feeling of being acquaintedwith him. If the reader, finishing this volume, has a vivid realizationof Lincoln as a man, the author will be fully repaid.

To achieve this purpose in brief compass, much has been omitted. Someof the material omitted has probably been of a value fully equal tosome that has been inserted. This could not well be avoided. But if thereader shall here acquire interest enough in the subject to continuethe study of this great, good man, this little book will have servedits purpose.

H. K.
WESTFIELD, NEW JERSEY, February, 1901.

At the beginning of the twentieth century there is, strictly speaking,no frontier to the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, the larger part of the country was frontier. In any portion ofthe country to-day, in the remotest villages and hamlets, on theenormous farms of the Dakotas or the vast ranches of California, one iscertain to find some, if not many, of the modern appliances ofcivilization such as were not dreamed of one hundred years ago. Aladdinhimself could not have commanded the glowing terms to write theprospectus of the closing years of the nineteenth century. So, too, itrequires an extraordinary effort of the imagination to conceive of thecondition of things in the opening years of that century.

The first quarter of the century closed with the year 1825. At thatdate Lincoln was nearly seventeen years old. The deepest impressions oflife are apt to be received very early, and it is certain that theinfluences which are felt previous to seventeen years of age have muchto do with the formation of the character. If, then, we go back to theperiod named, we can tell with sufficient accuracy what were thecircumstances of Lincoln's early life. Though we cannot precisely tellwhat he had, we can confidently name many things, things which in thisday we class as the necessities of life, which he had to do without,for the simple reason that they had not then been invented ordiscovered.

In the first place, we must bear in mind that he lived in the woods.The West of that day was not wild in the sense of being wicked,criminal, ruffian. Morally, and possibly intellectually, the people ofthat region would compare with the rest of the country of that day orof this day. There was little schooling and no literary training. Butthe woodsman has an education of his own. The region was wild in thesense that it was almost uninhabited and untilled. The forests,extending from the mountains in the East to the prairies in the West,were almost unbroken and were the abode of wild birds and wild beasts.Bears, deer, wild-cats, raccoons, wild turkeys, wild pigeons, wildducks and similar creatures abounded on every hand.

Consider now the sparseness of the population. Kentucky has an area of40,000 square miles. One year after Lincoln's birth, the totalpopulation, white and colored, was 406,511, or an average of tenpersonssay less than two familiesto the square mile. Indiana hasan area of 36,350 square miles. In 1810 its total population was24,520, or an average of one person to one and one-half square miles;in 1820 it contained 147,173 inhabitants, or about four to the squaremile; in 1825 the population was about 245,000, or less than seven tothe square mile.

The capital city, Indianapolis, which is to-day of surpassing beauty,was not built nor thought of when the boy Lincoln moved into the State.

Illinois, with its more than 56,000 square miles of territory, harboredin 1810 only 12,282 people; in 1820, only 55,211, or less than one tothe square mile; while in 1825 its population had grown a trifle over100,000 or less than two to the square mile.

It will thus be seen that up to his youth, Lincoln dwelt only in thewildest of the wild woods, where the animals from the chipmunk to thebear were much more numerous, and probably more at home, than man.

There were few roads of any kind, and certainly none that could becalled good. For the mud of Indiana and Illinois is very deep and verytenacious. There were good saddle-horses, a sufficient number of oxen,and carts that were rude and awkward. No locomotives, no bicycles, noautomobiles. The first railway in Indiana was constructed in 1847, andit was, to say the least, a very primitive affair. As to carriages,there may have been some, but a good carriage would be only a waste onthose roads and in that forest.