Lincoln and His Father

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Interesting thoughts, Liz. I agree that we really don't have much to go on, and that it's impossible to know what "would have been".

I will say that although Sarah Bush Johnston was a fine step-mother, she was just that. A step-mother, not his "real" mother. And she brought along more kids to crowd into a log cabin. What effects this had on Lincoln is hard to say.

As for his father, when he married Nancy he was a fairly prosperous young guy. Bought a farm. Lost part of it. Sold the rest at a loss. Bought another farm. Lost it completely. Moved to the wilderness away from most of his friends and family, and after a couple of years of what must have been back-breaking labor, his wife dies.

There is a lot of talk about how the tragedies of life affected Abraham. How about the ones that affected Thomas. I can't say I blame the guy for losing any ambition he might have once had.

(03-19-2013 03:40 PM)Liz Rosenthal Wrote:  I don't understand why Lincoln not losing his mother would have kept him from striking out on his own or made him less ambitious. It would be impossible to know what sort of impact Nancy Hanks would have had on him had she lived, especially since any information about her is sketchy. In fact, Lincoln's own memory of his mother is sketchy, at best.

Let's not forget that he had a fine step-mother, Sarah Bush Johnston. It seems that she filled all of Lincoln's needs for a mother. She loved him more than she loved her biological children; she encouraged him every way she could. And yet he still struck out on his own once he was able to make sure that his mother and step-father were all set up in Illinois, to which they had moved from Indiana in 1830.

Even if Nancy had lived, Lincoln's father would have been the same guy he always was, presumably-- someone Lincoln could not get along with or respect.

The way I look at it, the quality of Lincoln's brilliant mind was the determining factor in his decision to "seek his fortune" elsewhere. In other words, he needed to see what he could do with his brain. He had decided early on, apparently, that he did not want to follow in the footsteps of his father and their distant neighbors in Indiana by devoting his life to manual labor. But he never lost his affection for the "plain people," of whom he was one, even if he couldn't stand his father. And this latter point accounts for his success in politics. He loved the "plain people," and they loved him back.

(09-05-2012 09:04 PM)Craig Hipkins Wrote:  It is interesting to speculate how Lincoln's life would have turned out had Nancy Hanks not died from the milk-sickness. I don't believe that he ever would have become president, or for that matter have gotten into politics. One of the main reasons that Lincoln struck out on his own instead of staying around his family like most people did in those days was because of his poor relationship with his father. Perhaps, had Nancy lived into old age, Lincoln would have been reluctant to venture farther than the borders of Indiana, Kentucky or Illinois. He might have ended his days as an obscure shop clerk somewhere.

Craig

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