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Chapter_08__Arrays_and_Strings
1
All components of an array are of the same data type.
True
False
2
The array index can be any integer less than the array size.
True
False
3
The statement int list[25]; declares list to be an array of 26
components, since the array index starts at 0.
True
False
4
Given the declaration int list[20]; the statement list[12] =
list[5] + list[7]; updates the content of the twelfth component of
the array list.
True
False
5
Suppose list is a one dimensional array of size 25, wherein each component
is of type int. Further, suppose that sum is an int variable. The following
for loop correctly finds the sum of the elements of list.
sum = 0;
True
False
6
If an array index goes out of bounds, the program always terminates in an
error.
True
False
7
Arrays can be passed as parameters to a function by value, but it is faster to
pass them by reference.
True
False
8
When you pass an array as a parameter, the base address of the actual array is
passed to the formal parameter.
True
False
9
The one place where C++ allows aggregate operations on arrays is the input
and output of Cstrings.
True
False
10
In a twodimensional array, the elements are arranged in a table form.
True
False
11
Which of the following statements declares alpha to be an array of 25
components of the type int?
int alpha[25];
int array alpha[25];
int alpha[2][5];
int array alpha[25][25];
12
Assume you have the following declaration char nameList[100];.
Which of the following ranges is valid for the index of the array nameList?
0 through 99
0 through 100
1 through 100
1 through 101
13
Assume you have the following declaration int beta[50];. Which of the
following is a valid element of beta?
beta['2']
beta['50']
beta[0]
beta[50]
14
Assume you have the following declaration double salesData[1000];.
Which of the following ranges is valid for the index of the array salesData?
0 through 999
0 through 1000
1 through 1001
1 through 1000
15
Suppose that sales is an array of 50 components of type double. Which of
the following correctly initializes the array sales?
for (int 1 = 1; j
for (int j = 1; j
for (int j = 0; j
for (int j = 0; j
16
Suppose that list is an array of 10 components of type int. Which of the
following codes correctly outputs all the elements of list?
for (int j = 1; j < 10; j++) cout
for (int j = 0; j
for (int j = 1; j < 11; j++) cout
for (int j = 1; j
17
What is the output of the following C++ code?
0 1234
0 5 10 15
0 5 10 15 20
5 10 15 20
18
What is the value of alpha[2] after the following code executes?
int alpha[5];
int j;
1
4
5
6
19
What is the output of the following C++ code?
2 4 6 8 10
43210
86420
10 8 6 4 2
20
What is the output of the following C++ code?
0 5 10 15 20
5 10 15 20 0
5 10 15 20 20
Code results in index outofbounds
21
Suppose that gamma is an array of 50 components of type int and j is an
int variable. Which of the following for loops sets the index of gamma out
of bounds?
for (j = 0; j
for (j = 1; j < 50; j++) cout
for (j = 0; j
for (j = 0; j
22
Consider the following declaration: int alpha[5] = {3, 5, 7, 9,
11};. Which of the following is equivalent to this statement?
23
In C++, the null character is represented as ____.
'\0'
"\0"
'0'
"0"
24
Which of the following correctly declares name to be a character array and
stores "William" in it?
25
Consider the following declaration: char str[15];. Which of the
following statements stores "Blue Sky" into str?
26
Consider the following declaration:
char charArray[51];
char discard;
cin.get(charArray, 51);
cin.get(discard);
27
Consider the following statement: double alpha[10][5];. The number
of components of alpha is ____.
15
50
100
150
28
Consider the statement int list[10][8];. Which of the following about
list is true?
29
Consider the following statement: int alpha[25][10];. Which of the
following statements about alpha is true?
30
Which of the following correctly declares and initializes alpha to be an array
of four rows and three columns with the component type int?
31
After the following statements execute, what are the contents of matrix?
int matrix[3][2];
int j, k;
0 01 12 2
0 12 345
0 11 223
1 12 233
32
Given the following declaration:
int j;
int sum;
double sale[10][7];
which of the following correctly finds the sum of the elements of the fifth row
of sale?
int j;
int sum;
double sale[10][7];
which of the following correctly finds the sum of the elements of the fourth
column of sale?
34
In row order form, the ____.
35
A collection of a fixed number of elements (called components) arranged in n
dimensions (n>=1) is called a(n) ____.
matrix
vector
ndimensional array
parallel array
36
In a(n) ____________________ data type, each data item is a collection of
other data items.
Answer:
structured
37
The word ____________________ is used before the array declaration in a
function heading to prevent the function from modifying the array.
Answer:
const
38
The ____________________ of an array is the address (that is, the memory
location) of the first array component.
Answer:
base address
39
For a list of length n, the ____________________ sort makes exactly (n(n
1))/2 key comparisons and 3(n1) item assignments.
Answer:
selection
40
The form of the for loop shown below is called a(n)
____________________ for loop.
Answer:
rangebased
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CHAPTER III
THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD
We have read Buckle's History of Civilization to little effect if we have
not learned that the development of an individual or a nation is
profoundly influenced by environment. The biographers of Lincoln
would appear to have kept this fact carefully in mind, for they have
been at great pains to give to us detailed descriptions of the houses
in which Lincoln lived and the neighborhoods where from time to
time he resided. Although the camera and the descriptive power of
the biographers have done much for us, they leave something to be
desired in the way of sketching a background from which the
Abraham Lincoln of the successive periods emerged into conditions
of life and thought that were more or less religious. For the purpose
of this present study the life of Lincoln divides itself into four parts.
The first is the period of his boyhood, from his birth in Kentucky until
his coming of age and the removal of his family from Indiana into
Illinois.
The second is the period of his early manhood, from the time he left
his father's home until he took up his residence in Springfield.
The third is the period of his life in Springfield, from his first arrival
on April 15, 1837, until his final departure on February 11, 1861, for
his inauguration as President.
The fourth is the period covered by his presidency, from his
inauguration, March 4, 1861, until his death, April 15, 1865.
Before considering at length the testimony of the people who knew
him, except as that testimony relates to these particular epochs, we
will consider the life of Lincoln as it was related to the conditions in
which he lived in these successive periods.
The first period in the life of Abraham Lincoln includes the twenty-
one years from his birth to his majority, and is divided into two
parts,—the first seven and one-half years of his life in the
backwoods of Kentucky, and the following thirteen years in the
wilderness of southern Indiana.
Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born
near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on Sunday, February 12, 1809. He was
the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who were
married near Beechland, Washington County, Kentucky, on June 12,
1806, when Thomas was twenty-eight and Nancy twenty-three. Nine
days before the birth of Abraham Lincoln the territory of Illinois was
organized by Act of Congress; the boy and the future State were
twin-born. For four years the family lived on the Rock Spring farm,
three miles from Hodgenville, in Hardin, now Larue County,
Kentucky. When he was four years old his parents moved to a better
farm on Knob Creek. Here he spent nearly four years more, and he
and his sister, Sarah, began going to school. His first teacher was
Zachariah Riney; his second, Caleb Hazel.
In the autumn of 1816, Thomas Lincoln loaded his household goods
upon a small flatboat of his own construction and floated down Knob
Creek, Salt River, and the Ohio, and landed on the northern bank of
the Ohio River. He thence returned and brought his family, who
traveled on horseback. The distance to where the goods had been
left was only about fifty miles in a straight line from the old home in
Kentucky, but was probably a hundred miles by the roads on which
they traveled. Thomas doubtless rode one horse with a child behind
him, and Nancy rode the other, also carrying a child behind her
saddle.
When the family arrived at the point where the goods had been left,
a wagon was hired, and Thomas Lincoln, with his wife, his two
children, and all his worldly possessions, moved sixteen miles into
the wilderness to a place which he had already selected, and there
made his home. That winter and the greater part of the following
year were spent in a "half-faced camp" from which the family moved
in the following autumn to a log cabin, erected by Thomas Lincoln.
For more than a year he was a squatter on this farm, but
subsequently entered it and secured title from the government. Here
Nancy Hanks Lincoln died, October 5, 1818, when Abraham was less
than ten years old. A year later Thomas Lincoln returned to Kentucky
and married Sally Bush Johnson, a widow, with three children. She
brought with her better furniture than the cabin afforded, and also
brought a higher type of culture than Thomas Lincoln had known.
She taught her husband so that he was able with some difficulty to
read the Bible and to sign his own name. On this farm in the
backwoods in the Pigeon Creek settlement, with eight or ten families
as neighbors, and with the primitive village of Gentryville a mile and
a half distant, Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood. Excepting for a
brief experience as a ferryman on the Ohio River and a trip to New
Orleans which he made upon a flatboat, his horizon was bounded by
this environment from the time he was eight until he was twenty-
one.
The cabin in which the Lincoln family lived was a fairly comfortable
house. It was eighteen feet square and the logs were hewn. It was
high enough to admit a loft, where Abe slept, ascending to it by
wooden pins driven into the logs. The furniture, excepting that
brought by Sally Bush, was very primitive and made by Thomas
Lincoln. Three-legged stools answered for chairs, and the bedsteads
had only one leg each, the walls supporting the other three corners.
Of the educational advantages, Mr. Lincoln wrote in 1860:
"It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals
still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools
so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher
beyond readin', writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three. If a
straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in
the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was
absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education."—Nicolay, p.
10.
Here he attended school for three brief periods. The first school was
taught by Azel W. Dorsey, when Abraham was ten years old; the
next by Andrew Crawford, when he was fourteen; and the third by a
teacher named Swaney, whose first name Mr. Lincoln was unable to
recall in later life. His schooling was under five different teachers,
two in Kentucky and three in Indiana. It was scattered over nine
years and embraced altogether less than twelve months of
aggregate attendance.
In Kentucky it is probable that his only textbook was Webster's
Elementary Speller. It was popularly known as the "Old Blueback."
Webster's Speller is a good speller and more. Each section of words
to be spelled is followed by short sentences containing those words,
and at the end of the book are three illustrated lessons in Natural
History—one on The Mastiff, another on The Stag, and the third on
The Squirrel. Besides these are seven fables, each with its illustration
and its moral lesson. I used this book in teaching school in the
backwoods of Kentucky, and still have the teacher's copy which I
thus employed.
The two Kentucky schools which Lincoln attended were undoubtedly
"blab" schools. The children were required to study aloud. Their
audible repetition of their lessons was the teacher's only assurance
that they were studying;[2] and even while he was hearing a class
recite he would spend a portion of his time moving about the room
with hickory switch in hand, administering frequent rebuke to those
pupils who did not study loud enough to afford proof of their
industry.
In Indiana, Lincoln came under the influence of men who could
cipher as far as the Rule of Three. He also learned to use Lindley
Murray's English Reader, which he always believed, and with much
reason, to be the most useful textbook ever put into the hands of an
American youth (Herndon, I, 37). He also studied Pike's Arithmetic.
Grammar he did not study in school, but later learned it under
Mentor Graham in Illinois.
The first of these schools was only about a mile and a half distant
from his home; the last was four miles, and his attendance was
irregular.
In the second school, taught by Andrew Crawford, he learned
whatever he knew of the usages of polite society; for Crawford gave
his pupils a kind of drill in social usages (Herndon, I, 37).
In Swaney's school he probably learned that the earth was round. A
classmate, Katy Roby, afterward Mrs. Allen Gentry, between whom
and Abraham a boy-and-girl attachment appears to have existed,
and who at the time was fifteen and Abe seventeen, is authority for
the statement that as they were sitting together on the bank of the
Ohio River near Gentry's landing, wetting their bare feet in the
flowing water and watching the sun go down, he told her that it was
the revolution of the earth which made the moon and sun appear to
rise and set. He exhibited what to her appeared a profound
knowledge of astronomy (Herndon, I, 39; Lamon's Life, p. 70).
It is not necessary for us to assume that Abraham knew very much
more about astronomy than the little which he told to Katy Roby; but
it is worth while to note in passing that when Abraham Lincoln
learned that the earth was round, he probably learned something
which his father did not know and which would have been admitted
by no minister whom Abraham had heard preach up to this time.
We are ready now to consider the character of the preaching which
Abraham Lincoln heard in his boyhood. Direct testimony is
fragmentary of necessity; but it is of such character that we are able
without difficulty to make a consistent mental picture of the kind of
religious service with which he was familiar.
A recent author has said that Lincoln never lived in a community
having a church building until he went to the legislature in Vandalia
in 1834 (Johnson, Lincoln the Christian, p. 31). This is probably true
if we insist upon its meaning a house of worship owned exclusively
by one denomination, but the same author reminds us that there
was a log meeting-house[3] within three miles of Lincoln's childhood
home in Kentucky (p. 22).
Dr. Peters says:
"The prayers that Parson Elkin said above the mound of Nancy
Hanks were the first public prayers to which Abraham ever
listened"—Abraham Lincoln's Religion, p. 24.
"Aunt Sairy sartainly did have faculty. I reckon we was all purty
ragged and dirty when she got there. The fust thing she did was
to tell me to tote one of Tom's carpenter benches to a place
outside the door, near the hoss trough. Then she had me an'
Abe an' John Johnson, her boy, fill the trough with spring water.
She put out a gourd full of soft soap, and another one to dip
water with, an' told us boys to wash up fur dinner. You just
naturally had to be somebody when Aunt Sairy was around. She
had Tom build her a loom, an' when she heerd o' some lime
burners bein' round Gentryville, Tom had to mosey over an' git
some lime an' whitewash the cabin. An' he made her an ash
hopper fur lye, an' a chicken-house nothin' could git into. Then
—te-he-he-he!—she set some kind of a dead-fall trap fur him,
an' got Tom to jine the Baptist Church. Cracky, but Aunt Sally
was some punkins!"—American Magazine, February, 1908, p.
364.
I am of opinion that what Mrs. Sarah Bush Lincoln told Herndon was
that her husband sometimes attended the Presbyterian service, and
that the church he joined was the Baptist, but not the Hardshell
Baptist. But evidence is wholly lacking that he had any connection
with the Presbyterian Church, or with the Free-will Baptists, of which
latter sect he probably never heard.
The church at Farmington of which Thomas Lincoln became a
member is not now in existence. I have endeavored through
investigation in Farmington, and by correspondence with Mr. Robert
T. Lincoln, to ascertain its denomination. It called itself "Christian,"
and Herndon did not doubt that that name indicated that it was a
church of the denomination sometimes called "Campbellite." But that
is not certain. Other denominations claim that as their distinctive
name, and one of them was at that time active in that part of
Illinois. My inquiries have brought me no certain knowledge on this
point; but Mr. Jesse W. Weik is of opinion that the denomination was
that known as "New Light." It is possible that Herndon was in error
in every one of his three affirmations concerning the religion of
Thomas Lincoln, and that the President's father was never a Free-
will Baptist, never a Presbyterian, and never a Disciple or
Campbellite. I have endeavored to learn whether his change from
the Baptist to the "Christian" church was a matter of conviction or
convenience, but on this I have found nothing except a statement
from the minister who buried him, in which it would appear that his
change of polity was a matter of conviction. This minister spoke very
highly of Thomas Lincoln, whom he had known well in the latter
years of his life.
There has been undue attempt to credit the pious boy Abraham with
the religious service conducted over the grave of his mother by Rev.
David Elkin[6] some months after her demise. There is no good
authority for this legend. Herndon probably tells the truth about it:
"Within a few months, and before the close of the winter, David
Elkin, an itinerant preacher whom Mrs. Lincoln had known in
Kentucky, happened into the settlement, and in response to the
invitation from the family and friends, delivered a funeral
sermon over her grave. No one is able now to remember the
language of Parson Elkin's discourse, but it is recalled that he
commemorated the virtues and good phases of character, and
passed in silence the few shortcomings and frailties of the poor
woman sleeping under the winter's snow."
—Herndon, I, 28.
This does not compel us to believe that there had been no preacher
in the Pigeon Creek settlement since the death of Nancy Hanks.[7] It
was customary among these Kentucky-bred people to hold the
funeral service some weeks or months after the burial. The author of
this volume has attended many such services.
The reasons require some explanation. The dead were commonly
buried on the day following death. There were, of course, no
facilities for embalming or preserving the corpse for any great length
of time. Preachers were nearly all farmers; and the particular
minister with whose church the family was affiliated might be living
at a considerable distance and be at that time at some distant place
upon his wide circuit. No minister expected to preach every Sunday
in any one place. A monthly appointment was the maximum
attempted; and the more remote settlements were not reached
statedly by any one preacher oftener than once in three months.
There were occasional services, however, by other ministers riding
through the country and preaching wherever they stayed overnight.
It was the author's custom when coming unexpectedly into a valley
to spread word up and down the creek that there would be
preaching that night in the schoolhouse or in the home where he
was entertained. The impromptu announcement never failed to bring
a congregation.
What took David Elkin into Indiana we do not know. He may have
been looking for a better farm than he had in Kentucky, where he
could dig out a living between his preaching appointments. He may
have been burdened for the souls of certain families formerly under
his care and now gone out like the Lincolns into a howling
wilderness. The late summer and early autumn between the end of
corn-plowing and the beginning of fodder-pulling afforded such a
minister opportunity to throw his saddlebags over his horse and start
on a longer circuit than usual; and the winter gave him still another
opportunity for long absence. He took no money and he collected
none, or next to none, but he had free welcome everywhere with
pork and corn pone for supper and fried chicken for breakfast. Many
a time the author of this volume has ridden up to a house just
before suppertime, has partaken with the family of its customary
cornbread and bacon or ham, and after preaching and a good night's
rest has been wakened in the morning before the rising of the sun
by a muffled squawk and flutter as one or more chickens were
pulled down out of the trees. After this fashion did the people of the
backwoods welcome the messengers of the Lord.
Not necessarily on his next appearance in a settlement is the
preacher requested to conduct the funeral service of persons
deceased since his last visit. The matter is arranged with more of
deliberation. A date is set some time ahead and word is sent to
distant friends.[8] After a time of general sickness such as had
visited Pigeon Creek in the epidemic of the "milk sick," Parson Elkin
may have had several funerals to preach in the same cemetery or at
the schoolhouse nearest at hand. I have known a half-dozen
funerals to be included in one sermon with full biographical
particulars of each decedent and detailed descriptions of all the
deathbed scenes, together with rapturous forecasts of the future
bliss of the good people who were dead and abundant warnings of
the flaming hell that awaited their impenitent neighbors. Even those
people who had not been noted for their piety during life were
almost invariably slipped into heaven through a deathbed
repentance or by grace of the uncovenanted mercies of God. It is
the business of all preachers to be very stern with the living and
very charitable toward the dead.[9]
I must add a further word about the custom of deferred funerals.
Although the burial was conducted without religious service, it was
not permitted to be celebrated in neglect. The news that a man was
dying would bring the sympathetic neighbors from miles around, and
horses would be tied up the creek and down while people waited in
friendly sorrow and conversed in hushed voices in the presence of
the solemn dignity of death. That night a group of neighbors would
"sit up" with the dead, and keep the family awake with frequent and
lugubrious song.
Next day the grave must be dug; and that required a considerable
part of the male population of the settlement. If only two or three
men came in the morning they would sit and wait for others and go
home for the dinner and come back. It thus has happened more
than once in my experience that we have brought the body to the
burial and have had to wait an hour or more in sun or wind for the
finishing of the digging of the grave.
I remember well an instance in which death occurred in the family of
one of the county officials. His wife died suddenly, and under sad
conditions. I mounted my horse and rode four or five miles to his
home. I hitched my horse to the low-swinging limb of a beech tree
and threaded my way among other horses into the yard, which was
filled with men, and up to the porch, which was crowded with
women. Passing inside, I spoke my word of sympathy to the grief-
stricken husband and his children. Then I passed out into the yard
and moved from group to group among the men. Presently a
neighbor of the sorrowing husband approached me and asked me to
step aside with him for private converse. This was strictly in
accordance with the custom of the country, and I walked with him
behind the corn-crib. He said to me: "Mr. McCune"—naming the
bereaved husband—"wants to know whether you have come here as
a preacher or as a neighbor?" I answered, "Tell him that I have
come as a neighbor." With this word he returned to the house. Up
on the hillside I could see the leisurely movements of the grave-
diggers. From the shed behind the house came the rhythmic tap of
the hammer driving in the tacks that fastened the white glazed
muslin lining of the home-made coffin. We had some little time still
to wait before either the grave or the coffin would be finished.
Presently the neighbor returned to where I waited behind the corn-
crib and brought with him Mr. McCune. The latter shook my hand
warmly and said, in substance: "I appreciate your coming and the
respect which you thus show for me and for my dead wife. I was
glad to see you come when you entered the house, but was a little
embarrassed because I knew it to be your custom to preach the
funeral sermon at the time of the burial. I have no objection to that
custom; and while we are Baptists [he pronounced it Babtist, and so
I have no doubt did Thomas Lincoln], there is no man whom I would
rather have preach my wife's sermon than you. We shall
undoubtedly have a Baptist preacher when the time for the funeral
comes, but I hope you also will be present and participate in the
service. But it is not our custom to hold the service at the time of
the burial, and we have distant friends who should be notified.
Moreover, there is another consideration. I have been twice married,
and I never yet have got round to it to have my first wife's funeral
preached. It seems to me that it would be a discourtesy to my first
wife's memory to have my second wife's sermon preached before
the first. What I now plan to do is to have the two funerals at once,
and I hope you will be present and participate."
I need only add that before I departed from that region he was
comfortably married to his third wife, not having gotten round to it
to have the funeral sermon of either of his first two wives. I am
unable to say whether when he finally got round to it there was any
increase in the number. It never was my fortune to conduct the joint
funeral of two wives of the same man at the same time; but I have
more than once been present where a second wife was prominent
among the mourners; and I sometimes believed her to be sincerely
sorry that the first wife was dead.
It is not easy for people who have not lived amid these conditions
and at the same time to have known other conditions to estimate
aright the religious life of a backwoods community. Morse, whose
biography of Lincoln is to be rated high, is completely unable to view
this situation from other than his New England standpoint. He says:
This criticism is partly just, but not wholly so. There was superstition
enough in the backwoods religion, and Abraham Lincoln never
wholly divested himself of it; but it was not all superstition. There
was a very real religion on Pigeon Creek.
In like manner, also, it is difficult for Lincoln's biographers to strike
an even balance between adoring idealization of log-cabin life and
horrified exaggeration of its squalor. Here again Morse is a classic
example of the attempt to be so honest about Lincoln's poverty as to
miss some part of the truth about it.
The Lincoln family was poor, even as poverty was estimated in the
backwoods. Lincoln himself was painfully impressed with the
memory of it, and Herndon and Lamon, who understood it better
than most of his biographers, felt both for themselves and for
Lincoln the pathos of his descent from "the poor whites"; but there
is no evidence that Lincoln felt this seriously at the time. His
melancholy came later, and was not the direct heritage of his
childhood poverty. Life had its joys for families such as his. Poverty
was accepted as in some sort the common lot, and also as a
temporary condition out of which everybody expected sometime to
emerge. Meantime the boy Abraham Lincoln had not only the joy of
going to mill and to meeting, but also the privilege of an occasional
frolic. We know of one or two boisterous weddings where he
behaved himself none too well. Besides these there were other
unrecorded social events on Pigeon Creek where the platter rolled
merrily and he had to untangle his long legs from under the bench
and move quickly when his number was called or pay a forfeit and
redeem it. He played "Skip-to-My-Lou" and "Old Bald Eagle, Sail
Around," and "Thus the Farmer Sows His Seed," and he moved
around the room singing about the millwheel and had to grab
quickly when partners were changed or stand in the middle and be
ground between the millstones. As large a proportion of people's
known wants were satisfied on Pigeon Creek as on some fashionable
boulevards. We need not seek to hide his poverty nor idealize it
unduly; neither is it necessary to waste overmuch of pity upon
people who did not find their own condition pitiable.
What kind of man had been produced in this environment and as the
result of the conditions of his heredity and of his inherent qualities?
What do we know about the Abraham Lincoln who in 1830 took
simultaneous leave of Indiana and his boyhood, and entered at once
upon his manhood and the new State, that, twin-born with him, was
waiting his arrival?
He was a tall, awkward, uncouth backwoodsman, strong of muscle,
temperate and morally clean. He had physical strength and was not
a bully; was fond of a fight but fought fairly and as a rule on the side
of weakness and of right. He was free from bad habits of all kinds,
was generous, sympathetic, and kind of heart. He was as yet
uninfluenced by any women except his own dead mother and his
stepmother. He was socially shy, and had not profited greatly by the
meager lessons in social usage which had been taught in Andrew
Crawford's school. He was fond of cock-fighting and of boisterous
sports, and had a sufficient leadership to proclaim himself "the big
buck of the lick" and to have that declaration pass unchallenged.
He could read, write, and cipher, and was eager for learning. He was
ambitious, but his ambitions had no known focus. He was only
moderately industrious, but could work hard when he had to do so.
He had some ambition to write and to speak in public, but as yet he
had little idea what he was to write or speak about. He was a great,
hulking backwoodsman, with vague and haunting aspirations after
something better and larger than he had known or seemed likely to
achieve.
What do we know about the spiritual development of the young
Boanerges who grew almost overnight in his eleventh year into a six-
footer and was so wearied by the effort that he was slow of body
and mind and was thought by some to be lazy ever afterward?
We know the books he read—the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Æsop's
Fables, Robinson Crusoe, and Weems' Life of Washington. It was a
good collection, and he made the most of it. Sarah Bush Lincoln
noted that while he did not like to work he liked to read, and she
said, "I induced my husband to permit Abe to study" (Herndon, I,
36).
John Hanks said of him, "He kept the Bible and Æsop's Fables
always within reach, and read them over and over again."
Sarah Bush did not claim that he showed any marked preference for
the Bible. Lamon quotes her as saying, "He seemed to have a
preference for the other books" (Life, pp. 34, 486). But he certainly
read the Bible with diligence, as his whole literary style shows.
Indeed, if we had only his coarse "First Chronicles of Reuben," which
we could heartily wish he had never written, and whose publication
in Herndon's first edition was one of the chief reasons for an
expurgated edition,[10] we should know that even then Abe Lincoln,
rough, uncouth and vulgar as he was, was modeling his style upon
the Bible.
We are told that when he went to church he noted the oddities of
the preachers and afterward mimicked them (Lamon: Life, pp. 55,
486). This might have been expected, for two reasons. First, he had
a love of fun and of very boisterous fun at that; secondly, he had a
fondness for oratory, and this was the only kind of oratory he knew
anything about.
It is a remarkable fact that the Lincoln family appears never at any
time in its history to have been strongly under the influence of
Methodism.[11] This is not because they did not know of it; no
pioneer could hide so deep in the wilderness as to be long hidden
from the Methodist circuit riders. But the prevailing and almost the
sole type of religion in that part of Indiana during Lincoln's boyhood
was Baptist, and in spite of all that Mrs. Lincoln believed about the
freedom of it, it was a very unprogressive type of preaching. The
preachers bellowed and spat and whined, and cultivated an artificial
"holy tone" and denounced the Methodists and blasphemed the
Presbyterians and painted a hell whose horror even in the
backwoods was an atrocity. Against it the boy Abe Lincoln rebelled.
Many another boy with an active mind has been driven by the same
type of preaching into infidelity.
Dr. Johnson quotes as indicative of the religious mind of the young
Lincoln the four lines[12] which in his fourteenth year he wrote on
the flyleaf of his schoolbook, and the two lines which he wrote in the
copybook of a schoolmate:
"Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen—
he will be good but
God knows When";
and
"A soul that can appreciate these hymns must recognize, first,
that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin;
second, that Jesus Christ died upon the Cross for the salvation
of the world; third, that life without the Saviour is an empty
bubble, and, fourth, that loyal devotion to the Christ and his
cause is man's highest calling, and the test of true character."—
Lincoln the Christian, pp. 28-29.
This is very far-fetched. It shows only that Abe sang such songs,
good, bad, and indifferent, as were current in his day, and without
any very fine discrimination either in songs sacred or secular. If one
were to make a creed out of any of his poetry in this period, it were
better to find it in his jingle, about the Kickapoo Indian, Johnny
Kongapod.[14] He was supposed to have composed an epitaph for
himself that ran on this wise:
It matters not for our purpose that these lines were not strictly
original with Johnny Kongapod. We meet them in George
Macdonald's story "David Elginbrod," and they have been used
doubtless in rural England for generations. But they involve a certain
rude and noble faith that the Judge of all the earth will do right and
that divine justice and human justice have a common measure.
Lincoln never forgot that, and he learned it on Pigeon Creek.
Herndon is our authority, if we needed any, that the Baptist
preaching of Lincoln's boyhood made him a lifelong fatalist.[15] He
emerged into manhood with the conviction that "whatever is to be
will be," and Mrs. Lincoln declared that this was his answer to
threats concerning his assassination; that it had been his lifelong
creed and continued still to be the ruling dogma of his life.
It would have gladdened the heart of Sarah Bush if her stepson,
whom she loved with a tenderness almost surpassing that which she
bestowed upon her own flesh and blood, had manifested in his
youth some signs of that irresistible grace which was supposed to
carry the assurance of conversion as an act not of man but of the
Holy Spirit. He did not manifest that grace in the form in which she
desired. She could not consistently blame him very much, for,
according to her own creed and that of Thomas Lincoln, nothing that
he could have done of his own volition would have mattered very
much.
Horace Bushnell's Christian Nurture had not yet been written; and if
it had there was not a preacher among the Baptists in southern
Indiana who would not have denounced it as a creation of the devil.
There were no Sunday schools in those churches, and when they
began to appear they were vigorously opposed. There was no
Christian nurture for the boy Abe Lincoln save the sincere but
lethargic religion of his father and the motherly ministrations of his
stepmother.
But "Abe was a good boy." With tears in her eyes Sarah Bush could
remember that he never gave her a cross word. He was
unregenerate, but not unlovable; and he had more faith than
perhaps he realized.
CHAPTER IV
THE ENVIRONMENTS OF LINCOLN'S YOUNG
MANHOOD
The second period of Lincoln's religious life extends from his removal
into Illinois in March of 1830 until the establishment of his residence
in Springfield, April 15, 1837.
Thomas Lincoln was a thriftless farmer who blamed external
conditions for his misfortunes. Following a second appearance of the
"milk sick," which came to southern Indiana in the winter of 1829,
he and his family removed in March of 1830 to Illinois. Abraham was
twenty-one years of age. He assisted his father to get established in
the new home, to which a wearying journey of fourteen days had
brought the household, and then set out in life for himself. For
several months he worked near home, but in the spring of 1831 he
made his second flatboat trip to New Orleans. The boat stuck on a
dam at Rutledge's mill at New Salem, and his ingenuity in getting it
over the dam won him local fame and had something to do with his
subsequent establishment of a home there. The flatboat stuck on
April 19, 1831. In June he returned to New Salem and entered into
business with Denton Offutt in a small and non-remunerative general
store. While waiting for the opening of this store he became
acquainted with Mentor Graham, a school teacher of local celebrity,
whom Lincoln assisted as clerk of a local election, and through him
learned the contents of Kirkham's Grammar, and also acquired the
essential elements of surveying. New Salem was a sporadic town
which had no good reason to exist. It was established in 1829 and
lasted barely seven years. It was located on the Sangamon River,
some fifteen miles from Springfield.
In February, 1832, this flatboat hand, then working as clerk, began
his canvass for the Legislature, his formal announcement of
candidacy appearing March 9. He was defeated, but received an
encouraging local vote. In 1832 he had a brief experience as a
soldier, serving in the Black Hawk War, starting in pursuit of the
Indians on April 27 and returning in July. Excepting for his absences
at the Black Hawk War and in attendance upon the meetings of the
Legislature in Vandalia, he was in New Salem practically during the
whole of the history of that little town. He established a partnership
in the firm of Lincoln & Berry, keepers of a general store, a business
for which he had no qualification, and he accumulated debts, which
he was unable to pay in full until after his first term in Congress
seventeen years later. On May 7, 1833, he became postmaster of the
microscopic village of New Salem, and held that position until May
30, 1836, about which date the town disappeared. In August, 1834,
he was elected to the Legislature, then sitting at Vandalia, and had
an important share in the removal of the state capital from there to
Springfield.
In New Salem occurred two of Lincoln's three recorded love affairs.
[16] In 1834 he fell in love with Ann Rutledge, to whom he became
engaged, and who died, August 25, 1835. In the autumn of 1836 he
made love to Miss Mary Owens, who refused him. These two love
affairs are related in detail by Lamon and by Herndon; the second of
them gave rise to Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Browning, one of the least
creditable things that ever came from his pen (Herndon, I, 192).
Heart-broken over the death of Ann Rutledge and ashamed of
himself for his lack of gallantry in his love affair with Miss Owens, he
saw New Salem doomed in all its hopes of being a city.
While sitting about the store waiting for business which did not
come, he read law after a desultory fashion, becoming what he
called not inappropriately "a mast-fed lawyer." For the benefit of any
reader to whom this term conveys no meaning, it may be stated that
"mast" consists of acorns, nuts, and other edible commodities, which
hogs running at large in the wilderness are able to feed upon.
Between a hog corn-fed in a stye and a backwoods mast-fed razor-
back, there is a marked difference, and Lincoln's phrase was a very
apt one. In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license. On
March, 1837, he was admitted to the bar. On April 15, 1837, he
moved to Springfield.
With his Springfield experience we shall deal later; that is an epoch
by itself. We now consider the conditions of life in New Salem and
their influence in shaking the religious character of Abraham Lincoln.
New Salem, while an insignificant hamlet, was located on the
Sangamon River and received its share of the travel to and from
Springfield. Its central institutions were its tavern, where Lincoln
boarded, and the store, where he read grammar and law, discussed
politics, and occasionally sold goods.
The influence of life in New Salem upon the mind of Abraham
Lincoln was very marked. We must not make the mistake of
considering it solely in the character of a poor little frontier town
destined to short life and in its day of no consequence to the world.
To Lincoln it was a city, and it had its own ambitions to become a
greater city. Although it had scarcely twenty houses, not one of them
costing much over a hundred dollars, and not more than a hundred
inhabitants, it was to him no mean city. Here Lincoln developed
rapidly. He read, discussed, thought, wrote, and spoke on a wide
variety of subjects. His style was that of florid declamation, a stump
oratory with some affectation of erudition. He made the most of his
few books, and every one of them left its deep impression upon him.
He continued to read the Bible, and grew somewhat familiar with
Shakespeare, Burns, and even Byron. While there was no church
building in New Salem, and church services were irregular, such
services as were held were generally in the tavern where he
boarded, a tavern kept at first by James Rutledge and afterward by
Henry Onstott. It is interesting to cull out of T. G. Onstott's
reminiscences a number that are based on his own recollections,
supplemented perhaps by traditions received from his father:
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