Extra Credit Questions

[David Lockmiller]

(05-11-2024 05:03 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  

Quote:Please try to keep your explanation short.

Short enough for you?

Best
Rob

Yes, it was short enough for me . . . but perhaps too long!

The words that you refuse to read and consider are:

Upon arriving in Indiana, Sarah was taken aback by the quasi-ursine condition of the Lincoln cabin, which she proceeded to improve forthwith.

When her new husband insisted that she sell some of her furniture, “saying it was too fine for them to keep,” she refused to do so. After replacing the crude puncheon tables and stools, she swiftly effected other improvements: a floor was laid down, doors and windows were installed, Abe and Sarah were dressed up with some of the abundant clothing she had brought from Kentucky, and “in a few weeks all had changed & where every thing was wanting now all was snug & comfortable.” She was a good cook, though her culinary skill was wasted on Abe, whom she described as “a moderate Eater” who obediently “ate what was set before him, making no complaint: he seemed Careless about this.”

[Such gustatory indifference persisted into adulthood. According to a White House secretary, Lincoln during his presidency “was one of the most abstemious of men; the pleasures of the table had few attractions for him.”]

Her meals were evidently nutritious, for the boy enjoyed good health. She probably served him the customary pioneer diet in Indiana, which consisted “mainly of cornbread on weekdays and wheatbread on Sundays; and mush and milk some of the time; pork, chickens, quails, squirrels and wild turkeys.” Occasionally she “used to get some sorghum and ginger and make some gingerbread. It wasn’t often, and it was our biggest treat,” Lincoln recalled.

Sarah Bush Lincoln tended to Abraham’s emotional as well as physical needs. Augustus H. Chapman reported that she “took an espical liking to young Abe” and “soon dressed him up in entire new clothes & from that time on he appeared to lead a new life.” She encouraged him to study, for she recognized that he was “a Boy of uncommon natural Talents,” which she did all she could to foster. As she told an interviewer, she moderated Thomas Lincoln’s reluctance to let Abe read: “I induced my husband to permit Abe to read and study at home as well as at school. At first he was not easily reconciled to it, but finally he too seemed willing to encourage him to a certain extent.”

The relationship between stepmother and stepson was remarkably close, as she remembered it: “I can say what scarcely one woman – a mother – can say in a thousand and it is this – Abe never gave me a cross word or look and never refused in fact, or Even in appearance, to do any thing I requested him.” She, in turn, “never gave him a cross word.” Abe and his stepmother were kindred souls, she thought: “His mind & mine – what little I had [–] seemed to run together – move in the same channel.” He “was dutiful to me always – he loved me truly I think.” She compared Abe favorably to her own son John: “Both were good boys, but I must Say . . . that Abe was the best boy I Ever Saw or Ever Expect to see.” He “always wanted to do just as I wanted him.”

Lincoln reciprocated the love of his stepmother, whom he called “mama.” In 1861, speaking “in the most affectionate manner,” he told Augustus H. Chapman that “she had been his best Friend in this world & that no Son could love a Mother more than he loved her.” Chapman concluded that “her love for him was warmly returned & continued to the day of his death. But few children loved their parents as he loved this Step Mother.” Joshua Speed, Lincoln’s closest confidant, thought that his “fondness for his step-mother and his watchful care over her after the death of his father [in 1851] deserves notice. He could not bear to have any thing said by any one against her.” Near the end of his life, Lincoln told Speed “of his affection for her and her kindness to him.” Curiously, Lincoln did not visit his stepmother often, even after his father had died. Perhaps he was reluctant to visit the paternal cabin lest it call to mind the one in Indiana where he had grown up.