Abraham Lincoln's Manual Labor

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12th 1809 in a small log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. His parents, Thomas and Nancy, named him after his grandfather who had brought the family to Kentucky in the late 1780’s. Abraham Lincoln spent most of his childhood living in log cabins all over Kentucky and into Indiana, as his father searched for better land. For Abraham and his sister Sarah, life was an endless journey of manual labor. As he grew up, Lincoln began to develop an ambition to do better than his father did for his family by getting an education and earning a living through ways other than manual labor. It was more than the manual labor that bothered Lincoln, it was the way his father treated him. Lincoln would speak about how his father

would beat him for undeserving reasons. In some ways he felt that his father treated him like a slave. This was one of the reasons Lincoln hated slavery so much. He hated the way his father treated him as a boy, so he was able to identify with the slaves. Abraham found the parental affection he desired from his mother who unfortunately passed away when he was eight. His father remarried a woman named Sarah Bush Johnston whom Lincoln got along quite well with. She encouraged Abraham’s ambition, and his passion for learning. Although Lincoln received less than a year's worth of formal education, he worked furiously to educate himself. The boy devoured any book or source of information he could get his hands on. When he read, he did more than just absorb the information, he asked himself how he would engage in this idea or this thought, and how this piece of information could be useful to him. Lincoln once said about himself, “I could not sleep when I got on the hunt for an idea, until I had caught it. This was a kind of passion with me, and it had stuck with me.” This passion of study was fueled by a hatred towards his father who could barely sign his own name. His father served as a negative role model for him. He regarded his father as lacking ambition, lazy, and anti-intellectual. All the things that Lincoln deeply desired to escape from, he saw in his father. Once old enough to leave his father, Abraham settled in an urban village in Illinois called New Salem. Lincoln began working as a clerk in a store and almost instantly became popular for his honesty and collection of funny stories. He felt very alone at times which often led him into feeling depressed. He began to self treat this depression by telling those stories and developing relationships with the people of his town. Through this, he developed into an exceptional public speaker. In 1832, Indians led by chief blackhawk attempted to reclaim their land by force. Many young men including Lincoln rushed to volunteer. The militiamen elected their own officers and his group chose him as their captain. He later said that this gave him more pleasure than any other success. This trust and confidence that his fellow men had in him was a tremendous ego-boost for a Lincoln who was quite uncertain of his identity and ashamed of his background. This enjoyful experience gave him a taste of what it was like to be elected. After the Blackhawk War ended, the twenty three year old Abraham Lincoln decided to run for State Legislature of Illinois. His first attempt failed, but just two years later he was elected into the state assembly. His success had little to do with his qualifications and a lot to do with his people skills. After three years of intense study Lincoln taught himself law and acquired his lawyers license. In the state assembly, most of the policy issues were local, but Lincoln took a lonely stand on one national issue, slavery. Slavery had existed in America for two hundred years but was now mostly confined in the rural south. Abolitionist groups in the north would campaign for an end to slavery but had little support. In Illinois, the legislature condemned the abolitionists as trouble makers. Lincoln and a colleague felt differently and believed that slavery is both founded on injustice and bad policy. Lincoln believed that this fighting against slavery would be his stepping stone to his political career. Though Lincoln did not believe in slavery, he was forced to admit that it was not prohibited by the constitution, and like many northerners he saw no legal way to eliminate slavery. In 1837, Lincoln moved to Springfield, the state capital of Illinois to practice law. A store owner who enjoyed one of his speeches named Joshua Speed, invited Lincoln to stay in his appartment for as long as he needed. They became best friends. He fell in love with a woman named Mary Todd and married her. Almost nine months after marriage Mary gave birth to their first son, Robert Lincoln.
Lincoln along with other lawyers and judges covered a five hundred mile circuit twice a year on horseback.

He became known for hard work and honesty. The other lawyers called him honest abe. His fellow lawyers began to call him honest Abe. Lincoln became a very successful lawyer and politician due to his warm personality and self deprecating humor. He eventually bought a house in 1844 for fifteen hundred dollars. The kind of marriage that the Lincolns had inside the house is debated amongst many historians. Most believe that it was a terrible marriage. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner described the marriage as a “scorching, burning hell”. Others believe that William Herndon hated Mary and deliberately exaggerated the slight problems they had with their marriage. Many historians believe that Lincoln was so involved in the public life that it led to him not giving Mary the proper attention that she needed, causing increased tension in the relationship. Lincoln would often treat his first son distantly in the same way his father treated him due to the fact that he had just begun his career as a lawyer and politician. In 1846, the Lincolns had a second son Edward. That same year Abraham Lincoln decided to enter politics at the national level winning the whig party nomination for a congressional seat. So the Lincolns moved from Illinois to Washington. He and his family began to fall in love with Washington, which of course led to an increase in his great ambition. It was there in Washington that Lincoln first encountered slavery. He could not walk from his boarding house to the capital without seeing the slave auction houses. Lincoln proposed a referendum to end slavery but was forced to drop the idea when it won almost no support. After serving one term in congress Lincoln found himself back in Springfield. Being out of politics, his last dealings with his father, and the death of his second son Edward, led Abraham into a depression. Abraham finally got rid of

the depression with the happiness he felt when his next son William was born in 1850. Three years later Mary gave birth to another boy, Tad. Lincoln, who had been somewhat distant as a father now became the indulgent parent.