James Parton

“ SIXTY-FIVE years ago, on a grassy hillock in the magnificent primeval forest of Southern Indiana, a few miles from the Ohio River, stood the small, unhewn, half-finished and most forlorn log-cabin of Thomas Lincoln. The father of the president was an idle, shiftless, worthless carpenter, who had taken up land in the wilderness, and lived by half cultivating a few acres and shooting the wild turkeys, the deer, and other game with which the region teemed. ”

“ Some readers have doubtless visited the richly wooded parks of Germany, France, or England, where the game is carefully preserved, where droves of clean, glistening black pigs and great herds of deer are seen, and where, as you walk along, there is heard at every step the rustle of a startled hare, and where broods of partridges are following their mother in search of food, as tame as chickens. Now, it was as easy for the settler to subsist his family in this Indiana forest, as it would be for one of the huntsmen to live in a great park, if he could shoot as much game as he liked. ”

“ Thomas Lincoln, therefore, being such a man as he was, destitute of ambition either for himself or his children, took life very easily, and any one acquainted with the family would have foretold for Abraham no higher destiny than that of a squatter on the frontier, or a flat-boat hand on the rivers. ”