Our American Holidays: Lincolns Birthday | Page 8

was vindicated by the citizen of a community which had no
existence when the republic was formed.
A cabin was built in primitive rudeness, and the future President split
the rails for the fence to inclose the lot. These rails have become
classical in our history, and the name of rail-splitter has been more than
the degree of a college. Not that the splitter of rails is especially
meritorious, but because the people are proud to trace aspiring talent to
humble beginnings, and because they found in this tribute a new
opportunity of vindicating the dignity of free labor.
CHOOSING "ABE" LINCOLN CAPTAIN

From "Choosing 'Abe' Lincoln Captain, and Other Stories"
When the Black Hawk war broke out in Illinois about 1832, young
Abraham Lincoln was living at New Salem, a little village of the class
familiarly known out west as "one-horse towns," and located near the
capital city of Illinois.
He had just closed his clerkship of a year in a feeble grocery, and was
the first to enlist under the call of Governor Reynolds for volunteer
forces to go against the Sacs and Foxes, of whom Black Hawk was
chief.
By treaty these Indians had been removed west of the Mississippi into
Iowa; but, thinking their old hunting-grounds the better, they had
recrossed the river with their war paint on, causing some trouble, and a
great deal of alarm among the settlers. Such was the origin of the war;
and the handful of government troops stationed at Rock Island wanted
help. Hence the State call.
Mr. Lincoln was twenty-three years old at that time, nine years older
than his adopted State. The country was thinly settled, and a company
of ninety men who could be spared from home for military service had
to be gathered from a wide district. When full, the company met at the
neighboring village of Richland to choose its officers. In those days the
militia men were allowed to select their leaders in their own way; and
they had a very peculiar mode of expressing their preference for
captains. For then, as now, there were almost always two candidates for
one office.
They would meet on the green somewhere, and at the appointed hour,
the competitors would step out from the crowds on the opposite sides
of the ground, and each would call on all the "boys" who wanted him
for captain to fall in behind him. As the line formed, the man next the
candidate would put his hands on the candidate's shoulder; the third
man also in the same manner to the second man; and so on to the end.
And then they would march and cheer for their leader like so many
wild men, in order to win over the fellows who didn't seem to have a
choice, or whose minds were sure to run after the greater noise. When

all had taken sides, the man who led the longer line, would be declared
captain.
Mr. Lincoln never outgrew the familiar nickname, "Abe," but at that
time he could hardly be said to have any other name than "Abe"; in fact
he had emerged from clerking in that little corner grocery as "Honest
Abe." He was not only liked, but loved, in the rough fashion of the
frontier by all who knew him. He was a good hand at gunning, fishing,
racing, wrestling and other games; he had a tall and strong figure; and
he seemed to have been as often "reminded of a little story" in '32 as in
'62. And the few men not won by these qualities, were won and held by
his great common sense, which restrained him from excesses even in
sports, and made him a safe friend.
It is not singular therefore that though a stranger to many of the enlisted
men, he should have had his warm friends who at once determined to
make him captain.
But Mr. Lincoln hung back with the feeling, he said, that if there was
any older and better established citizen whom the "boys" had
confidence in, it would be better to make such a one captain. His
poverty was even more marked than his modesty; and for his stock of
education about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend twenty-seven
years later:
"I did not know much; still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to
the rule of three, but that was all."
That, however, was up to the average education of the community; and
having been clerk in a country grocery he was considered an educated
man.
In the company Mr. Lincoln had joined, there was a dapper little chap
for whom Mr. Lincoln had labored as a farm hand a year before, and
whom he had left on account of ill treatment from him.