Sterling North - Abe Lincoln

Fording the creeks, the oxen would break through the thin ice at every step. Abe had a little dog who trotted faithfully along beside him all the way. But once when they had just crossed a stream, Lincoln looked back to see the small beast whining pitifully on the far shore, unwilling to brave the plunge into the icy water.

I could not endure the thought of abandoning even a dog, Abe recalled. Pulling off shoes and socks I waded across the stream and triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under my arm.

Copyright 1956 by Sterling North. Text copyright renewed 1984 by Gladys North. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1956.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
North, Sterling.
Abe Lincoln. (A Landmark book)
SUMMARY : A biography of Abraham Lincoln, focusing on his childhood spent in poverty on the Midwestern frontier and chronicling his rise to the presidency and the highlights of his tenure.
1. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865Juvenile literature.
2. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865Childhood and youthJuvenile literature.
3. PresidentsUnited StatesBiographyJuvenile literature.
[1. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865. 2. Presidents.]
I. Title. E457.905.N63 1987 973.70924 [B] [92] 87-4654

eISBN: 978-0-307-81414-2

RANDOM HOUSE and colophon and LANDMARK BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

v3.1

It [the story of my early life] can all be condensed into a single sentence and that sentence you will find in Grays ElegyThe short and simple annals of the poor.

A. LINCOLN

Nine-year-old Dennis Hanks sped down the path that led to the Lincoln cabin. Leaping ice-crusted puddles and avoiding the frozen ruts, he skimmed along the curving trail that wandered through the brush-covered hills bordering Nolin Creek.

It was Sunday, February 12, 1809, a day that was to become famous in American history. But on that cold winter morning, Dennis was only aware that a boy baby had been born to Tom and Nancy Hanks Lincolna son named Abraham.

Dennis often came down this road to visit the Lincolns. He and Nancy Lincoln were first cousins. Both had been reared by their kindly aunt and uncle, Tom and Betsy Sparrow. No wonder the Lincolns had wanted the Sparrows to be the first to see the new baby.

Blue wood-smoke was rising from the chimney of the Lincoln cabin as Dennis raced into the clearing, the tail of his coonskin cap streaming in the wind. He wondered what little Abe would look like. Dennis didnt think much of babies in general, but maybe Nancys would be something special.

As the boy lifted the latch and stepped into the fire-lit, one-room cabin, he saw for the first time, lying there beside the tired but smiling Nancy, the homely baby who would one day become Americas most beloved president.

Years later, when Dennis Hanks was an old man, he liked to tell the story of that frosty morning. Perhaps he mixed a few of his facts and invented a few others as old men sometimes do. But listeners never forgot the tale as he told it:

Nancy was layin thar in a pole bed lookin purty happy. Tomd built up a good fire and throwed a bar skin over the kivers to keep em warm.

Betsy Sparrow was scurrying about, doing everything a woman could for mother and child. She washed little Abe and put a yaller flannen petticoat an a linsey shirt on him, an cooked some dried berries with wild honey fur Nancy, an slicked things up.

Nancy let Dennis hold the baby, and the boy noticed that the infants face looked like red cherry-pulp, squeezed dry, in wrinkles.

Be keerful, Dennis, Nancy said, fur you air the fust boy hes ever seen.

After a few minutes Dennis handed the crying baby to his aunt Betsy Sparrow, saying, Aunt, take him! Hell never come to much. The Lincolns and particularly the Hankses were humble people who never could have imagined that this child would one day be a great and famous man.

Little Abe lay in his cradle that first year needing nothing but food and warmth and love. What did he see from where he lay? Firelight. A spinning wheel turning. The gentle face of his mother bending over him. Perhaps the coarse black hair and swarthy face of Tom Lincoln as he took his hunting rifle from its peg above the fireplace. Often another face appearedthat of his two-year-old sister, Sarah, looking tenderly at her baby brother; rocking him; laughing when Abe smiled; constantly asking when he would be big enough to talk and to play with her.

And the second year? Walking as best he could, holding his sisters hand, he must have visited the spring of clear water for which the farm was named. Out of a little cave poured the crystal stream. It ran between mossy stones. Then it disappeared mysteriously into the earth, making a sound like music.

When he grew to manhood, Lincoln remembered nothing of Sinking Spring Farm, his birth-place on the South Fork of Nolin Creek, near Hodgenville, Kentucky. His first memories were of another farm not many miles away to which the family moved when he was two years old. Once again Thomas Lincoln built a rough log cabin, this time in the fertile valley of Knob Creek, beneath the shadow of a great ridge known as Muldraughs Hill.

It didnt seem no time till Abe was runnin round in buckskin moccasins an breeches, a tow-linen shirt an coonskin cap, Dennis Hanks was later to recall. Abe never give Nancy no trouble after he could walk except to keep him in clothes. Most o the time we went bar foot. An Abe was right out in the woods, about as soons he was weaned, fishin in the crick goin on coon hunts with Tom an me an the dogs; follerin up bees to find bee trees, an drappin corn fur his pappy. Mighty interestin life fur a boy, but thar was a good many chances he wouldnt live to grow up.

Abe Lincoln seems to have had similar memories of those years. My earliest recollection is of the Knob Creek place. Our farm was composed of three fields which lay in the valley surrounded by high hills and deep gorges. One Saturday afternoon the other boys planted the corn in what we called the big fieldit contained seven acresand I dropped the pumpkin seed. I dropped two seeds every other hill and every other row. The next Sunday morning there came a big rain in the hills; it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming down through the gorges, washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and all clear off the field.

In one such flood as this, Abe fell into the creek and might have drowned. Luckily his friend and playmate, Austin Gollaher, was on hand to hold out a long branch and drag him safely to shore.

It was here on the Knob Creek farm that Abe gained his first glimpse of the larger world. Down the Cumberland Trail, which passed the cabin door, came travelers of all sortspeddlers, pioneers seeking new land, even slaves in chains. Once Abe gave a fish he had caught in the creek to a discharged soldier hobbling home from the War of 1812. The big-eared Lincoln boy listened, watched, and wondered. He has been described as a spidery lad with his fair share of mischief. But even at so young an age he was willing and eager to learn.