Henry Clay Witney

“ Gentryville was a little world by itself. No circus or lecturer ever came within its borders. Its inhabitants lived within themselves, and entertained each other the best they could in a social style, and while Lincoln was in great demand as an entertainer and otherwise, he yet had to endure rebuffs which he took as seriously to heart as if he had been fashioned in an ordinary mould of humanity. ”

“ In the infinite stretch and realms of the imagination, it is not allowable that a man of unique history should have other than a unique origin. (Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf; Caesar descended from Anchises and Venus; and Napoleon from Agamemnon or Achilles.) Despite all fable, Mr. Lincoln had an origin, on both the maternal and paternal line, common to mankind in general. No fact is better avouched than that Richard Berry Sr., the grandfather of the Richard Berry Jr. who became surety on Thomas Lincoln's marriage bond, was also the grandfather of Nancy Hanks. ”

“ Without a single domestic animal, three miles from any neighbor, with no protection from the approaching winter storms but the now leafless trees, no defence from the cold but an open brush fire, and no shelter from the rude weather but the few ragged clothes they chanced to have, they present to the imagination a picture more pitiable than that of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, or, indeed, of any of the more spectacular scenes of pioneer life. ”

“ Lincoln beyond his youthful prime; he abandoned it, as he grew and expanded in intellect, together with sundry other foibles, and as a man was as magnanimous and charitable as he was revengeful and satirical as a youth. ”

“ In this rude cabin the little stranger lived until he had attained his fourth year. As there were no immediate neighbors, the parents and the two little children were compelled to be company for each other, and we can only imagine—for history was then engaged on statelier themes, such as the career of Napoleon—what their daily life could have arrayed of current happiness, as a solace for prosaic and uneventful poverty and privation. ”

“ In 1816 the land hunger which Thomas Lincoln had inherited from his father, the Virginia emigrant, led him to barter his imperfect title to his farm for ten barrels of rye whiskey and twenty dollars in cash, and go to Indiana on a prospecting tour, with a view to emigration. Such is the usual explanation of modern scientific biographers, who find the springs of momentous events in human impulses rather than in divine foreordination. ”

“ Lincoln recognized, praised, and relied on the Almighty. He seemed to act as if He was present, exercising a personal supervision over our affairs, and in every way, and upon all proper occasions, he recognizes and attests his gratitude to Him for mercies and providences, and humbly receives blows from His chastening hand.
The proper Christianity of such a man cannot be questioned. ”

“ Although Thomas Lincoln had changed his residence from a camp to a cabin, it was not an extremely radical change from discomfort to comfort, for the cabin had neither a door nor windows; egress and ingress were had through an opening which was designed ultimately to accommodate a door. The house was likewise innocent of a floor, save the bare and naked earth. These omissions appeared all the more signifi- cant and objectionable from the better order of things in that line, inherent in the surroundings of other settlers, who were rapidly settling in the neighborhood. Poor children! ”

“ A log fire kindled and kept up, night and day, in front of the camp, completed the establishment. Such an aboriginal structure as this served for an entire year as a home for the family that included the most famous man of modern times. This species of home was not inapt for a pioneer and his family in the summertime or in good weather; but when drenching storms came, or a south wind drove the smoke into the camp so as to compel evacuation by the inmates, it was extremely uncomfortable, if not, indeed, intolerable. ”

“ A disease equally to be dreaded with the cholera, and very similar alike in its manifestations and fatality, brooded like a spell over it, making it "a valley of the shadow of death." It prevailed in the wooded regions of both Indiana and Illinois, and was called, in the homely and inaccurate vernacular of those regions, "milk sick." It was a mysterious disease, and baffled science and medicine alike. In less than two years from the settlement of Thomas Lincoln on Pigeon Creek, his wife, and her uncle and aunt, all succumbed to this dread disease and died ”

“ That the mother, with an ambition and enterprise far above her situation, could read and write, is a basis of fact from which we may reasonably infer that she was wont to gather her little progeny at her knee and instil into their infant minds the rudiments of education which would lead them to a better condition of life than she had ever known. ”

“ I am not unaware that John and Dennis Hanks call her a Sparrow, but they also call the President's grandfather Mordecai. There is no real basis for either statement, except as I have stated, nor am I unaware that a higher authority than the Hankses does not concur in my arrangement of the pedigree of Nancy Hanks; but it is a maxim in equity that "what ought to be done is considered as done," and inasmuch as this statement, well known to close students of Lincolnian biography, ought not to have been made, or, if made, ought not to be printed, it should be treated as not made at all ”

“ The united efforts of all the members of this little family served to keep the wolf from the door and also to show some progress toward a more comfortable state of existence; and in one year from the date of the first unpromising settlement in this virgin wilderness, a log cabin, situated a few rods distant from the camp, offered a better shelter, and gave token of Thomas Lincoln's ambition, and of his advancement towards a higher condition of life. ”

“ Abraham Lincoln, whether as boy or man, was not enamoured of steady, hard work; he preferred a variety of tasks, chiefly mental labor. He was by no means lazy, but was fond of frequent change. Accordingly, throughout his youthful career, he is seen to select such engagements and avocations as allowed him to interweave variety with industry and mental labor or recreation with muscular labor. ”

“ Whether he kept his protest within the strict realms of ideal propriety it is needless to inquire; what the great martyr believed in the years of his adolescence can have none but speculative interest. The theories of the untutored mind are prone to fallacies, alike in sacred and secular things. What he believed as the result of maturity of intellect, inquiry, suffering, and experience is all that is valuable as example.
While all men are agents of the Deity to enforce His will, Mr. Lincoln was the especial nuncio and vicegerent of the Deity to execute a supernatural mission. ”

“ Solomon Lincoln of Hingham (since deceased) : "My father's name was Thomas, my grandfather's was Abraham, the same as my own. My grandfather went from Rockingham County, in Virginia, to Kentucky about the year 1782. And two years afterwards was killed by the Indians. We have a vague tradition that my great-grandfather went from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and that he was a Quaker. Further than that, I have never heard anything. It may do no harm to say that Abraham and Mordecai are common names in our family." ”

“ When any church will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul. ”

“ When he was sixteen years old, he entered into the service of one Taylor, who owned and operated a ferry franchise across the Ohio at the mouth of Anderson Creek. Here Lincoln remained as a boy-of-all-work, for nearly a year, earning six dollars a month ; and at another time both he and his sister were hired out to Josiah Crawford, the former as a field hand, the latter as kitchen-maid. There is hardly a field within a radius of two miles of Gentryville in which the great Emancipator has not wrought at the humblest of labor for what would now be deemed insignificant wages. ”

“ I had an uncle John N. Hill who died in Hardin County in 1883 at the age of one hundred years. He was one of the most intelligent and best posted men in Kentucky history I ever knew in my life, and this was his version of the relationship, as well as that of my grandfather William Brumfield and grandmother Nancy (Lincoln) Brumfield. Uncle Hill was not related to the Lincoln family, and, of course, had nothing to cover up or conceal. He lived in Washington County in his younger days, right by the side of the Lincoln and Berry family ”

“ No man ever saved so many human lives by the pulsations of his kindly heart; no power save the Almighty ever used the power of pardon so graciously and benignly; no man ever dried the mourners' tears, assuaged grief of stricken ones, restored the condemned to life and hope, to such an extent, and with such a sympathetic soul as he. ”

“ There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age, I did not know much."
At the time when Thomas Lincoln settled in Indiana, the county was named Perry, and its county-seat was known as Troy, on the Ohio River, but the country settled so rapidly that a new county was formed called Spencer, the county-seat of which was Rockport. A few years after the advent of the Lincolns, a little trading-post was established within less than two miles of their home, which, taking its name from its principal settler, was denominated Gentryville. ”

“ Abraham Lincoln, who in the years of his adolescence was extremely latitudinarian in his religious beliefs, when entrusted with the mission of greatest import to humanity ever confided to man since Moses the lawgiver, became fully reconciled to the essential truths of Christianity. ”

“ Thanks are extended to The Lincoln Farm Association, and particularly to its secretary, Richard Lloyd Jones, for permission to use Miss Tarbell's article, "The Parents of Abraham Lincoln" as an introduction to "Lincoln the Citizen."
The mutual helpfulness of these Lincoln associations and publications is the best of tributes to the beneficent influence of that great man to whom "charity" in the broad sense of loving aid and consideration extended to all men was the dearest of words and things. ”

“ As the two young people sat barelegged on a log and dangled their feet in the limpid waters of Little Pigeon Creek, and talked the light and frothy chatter of their age, the sun sank low in the west, and the little miss exclaimed: "See, Abe, the sun's going down!" "No," returned Abe with the importance of superior knowledge, "the sun doesn't go down; it's we that do the sinking." But the pert auditor ended the explanation with the conclusive rejoinder, "Abe, you're a fool." ”

“ The desire has been to make a reading and, indeed, working edition suited to the needs of the average American, to whom everything which reveals the character of the great President is of interest, and anything which does not afford such revelation, even though penned with Lincoln's hand, and signed with his name, is without real associational value. ”

“ More than any other man in modern life, he completely fulfilled the requirement, and justified the asseveration, of James, the brother of our Lord, that "pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." ”

“ My great-grandmother, Mary Shipley Lincoln, moved with my grandfather, William Brumfield, who married her daughter Nancy, to Hardin County, Kentucky, and lived the balance of her long life with them, and died, when I was a good big boy, at the age of one hundred and ten years. ”

“ A great-grandson of Thomas, the cooper, was Benjamin, a Major General in the Revolutionary War, the same who received the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, who also quelled "Shays'" Rebellion in Western Massachusetts in 1787, and to whom, when Knox retired, was tendered the position of Secretary of War in Washington's Cabinet, which honor he declined. Another descendant of Samuel Lincoln was Levi Lincoln, who was a member of Congress and Attorney General of the United States in Jefferson's Cabinet from March 5, 1801, to December 23, 1805. ”

“ Then his absolute morality, purity of life, beneficence of conduct, abounding charity, and the catholicity of his love of his kind, must inure to his infinite credit. No ruler of a republic ever had so much power ”

“ The Lincolns and Hankses had been neighbors in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The Berrys, Shipleys, Lincolns, and Hankses had owned a common tie of spiritual community in Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. One Richard Berry had emigrated from North Carolina to Kentucky in the same party with Abraham Lincoln Sr. They were connected by the fact of both having married sisters of the name of Shipley. A daughter of Richard Berry Sr. had married into the Hanks family in Virginia, the issue being one child, a girl, named Nancy. ”

“ As he grew to manhood, his practical mind discarded all conventional matters appertaining to religion, and boldly took issue with every artificial barrier, mediator, or approach which lay between his Maker and man. ”