Ignorance of the law is no defense. How did Abraham Lincoln learn this fact?

[David Lockmiller]

Note: This work is a conglomerate of two versions of the same story: The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln, Six Months at the White House, by F. B. Carpenter, (1879), chap. XXXII, pages 96-98; Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished Men of His Time, Allen Thorndike Rice, collector and editor, (1888), chap. XIV (William D. Kelley), pages 279-80. Roger also included a much shorter version of this same story in his post #3 on this same thread. I do not know where and when this story was originally published.


One evening when a few gentlemen, among whom was Mr. Seward, had met in the Executive Chamber without special business, and were talking of the past, the President said, “Seward, you never heard, did you, how I earned my first dollar?” “No,” rejoined Mr. Seward.

“Well,” continued Mr. Lincoln, I was about eighteen years of age, I belonged, you know, to what they call down South, the ‘scrubs;’ people who do not own slaves are nobody there. But we had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell.

“After much persuasion, I got the consent of mother to go, and constructed a little flatboat, large enough to take a barrel or two of things that we had gathered, with myself and little bundle, down to New Orleans. A steamer was coming down the river. We have, you know, no wharves on the Western streams; and the custom was, if passengers were at any of the landings, for them to go out in a boat, the steamer stopping and taking them on board.

“I was contemplating my new flatboat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any particular, when two men came down to the shore in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different boats singled out mine, and asked, ‘Who owns this?’ I answered, somewhat modestly, ‘I do.’ ‘Will you,’ said one of them, ‘take us and our trunks out to the steamer?’ ‘Certainly,’ said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning something. I supposed that each of them would give me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flatboat, the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamboat.

“They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks, and put them on deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar, and threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money.

“You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day, -- that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed wider and fairer before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that time.”

Note: This work is a conglomerate of two versions of the same story: The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln, Six Months at the White House, by F. B. Carpenter, (1879), chap. XXXII, pages 96-98; Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished Men of His Time, Allen Thorndike Rice, collector and editor, chap. XIV (William D. Kelley), pages 279-80.