Lincoln's mother

[Steve]

I was recommended this article from 2024 about Lincoln and his views about his mother and her family:


https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ja...e/id/6748/


I highly recommend it as well! Well worth the read!

[Gene C]

Interesting article that I will need to reread.
Thanks for sharing.

[RJNorton]

Excellent article, Steve.  Thank you for posting the link.

The author's reference to the words "angel" or "angelic" did not actually come from Abraham Lincoln himself.  
Herndon reported that Lincoln said of his mother, "God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."  According to Herndon, Lincoln made this comment while the two men were out riding the circuit c.1850.  The reference was to his birth mother, not his stepmother.  I realize some sources insert the word "angel" into the quote, but that is not the way Herndon recalled it.  I am not sure why some Lincoln biographers added "angel" to Lincoln's wording.
H

[David Lockmiller]

An interesting observation at the end of the third paragraph:

"All of Lincoln’s great and memorable prose was written to be read aloud."

[David Lockmiller]

An interesting observation at the end of the third paragraph:

"All of Lincoln’s great and memorable prose was written to be read aloud."

 
 
In the Executive Chamber one evening, there were present a number of gentlemen, among them Mr. Seward.
A point in the conversation suggesting the thought, 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. Gentlemen, you may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me 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.”

Six Months at the White House, pages 96-98.

One might well make the argument that this was the first step on Abraham Lincoln's journey to be President of the United States.