The Lincoln Story Book | Page 3

State legislature.
1840--Partner in law with S. T. Logan.
1842--Married Miss Mary Todd, of Kentucky. Of the four sons, Edward died in infancy; William ("Willie") at twelve at Washington; Thomas ("Tad") at Springfield, aged twenty; Robert M. T., minister to Great Britain, presidential candidate, secretary of war to President Garfield. His only grandson, Abraham, died in London, March, 1890.
1844--Proposed for Congress.
1845--Law partner with W. H. Herndon, for life.
1846--Elected to Congress, the single Whig Illinois member; voted antislavery; sought abolition in the D. C.; voted Wilmot Proviso. Declined reelection.
1848--Electioneered for General Taylor.
1849--Defeated by Shields for United States senator.
1852--Electioneered for General Scott.
1854--Won the State over to the Republicans, but by arrangement transferred his claim to the senatorship to Trumbull. October, debated with Douglas. Declined the governorship in favor of Bissell.
1856--Organized the Republican Party and became its chief; nominated vice-president, but was not chosen by its first convention; worked for the Fremont-Dayton presidential ticket.
1858--Lost in the legislature the senatorship to Douglas.
1859--Placed for the presidential candidacy. Made Eastern tour "to get acquainted."
1860--May 9, nominated for President, "shutting out" Seward, Chase, Cameron, Dayton, Wade, Bates, and McLean.
1861--March 4, inaugurated sixteenth President; succeeds Buchanan, and precedes his vice--Andrew Johnson, whom General Grant succeeded. Civil War began by firing on Fort Sumter, April 12.
1862--September 22, emancipation announced.
1863--January 1, emancipation proclaimed. November 19, Gettysburg Cemetery address. December 9, pardon to rebels proclaimed.
1864--Unanimous nomination as Republican presidential candidate for re-election, June 7. Reelected November 8.
1865--March 4, inaugurated for the second term. April 14, assassinated in Ford's Theater, Washington, by a mad actor, Wilkes Booth. April 19, body lay in state at Washington. April 26, Booth slain in resisting arrest, by Sergeant Boston Corbett, near Port Royal. April 21 to May 4, funeral-train through principal cities North, to Springfield, Illinois.
1871--Temporarily deposited in catacomb.
1874--In catacomb, in sarcophagus. The completed monument dedicated.
1876--To frustrate repetition of body-snatchers' attempt, reinterred deeper.
1900--A fifth removal; the whole structure solidly rebuilt, containing the martyred President, his wife, and their three children, as well as the grandson bearing Abraham's name.

THE LINCOLN STORY BOOK
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CHILDISH RIME.
In a copybook, at the age of nine or ten:
Abraham Lincoln, his hand and pen. he will be good, but god knows when.
The small "g" led a public speaker to denounce the sort of men--"sordid and ignorant"--who write "God with a small g and gold with a big one." This was a scrapbook in humble imitation of the albums in the East.
Another copybook motto. (A year or so later.)
Good boys who to their books apply Will all be great men by and by.
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THE LITTLE HATCHET DID IT.
In 1823 Abraham Lincoln went briefly to Crawford's school, a log house, pleasing the teacher by his attention to the simple course. The boy had read but a small library, principally "Weems' Life of Washington," which had impressed him deeply. This is shown by the following anecdote told by Andrew Crawford, the Spencer County pedagogue: The latter saw that a buck's head, nailed on the schoolhouse, was broken in one horn, and asked the scholars who among them broke it. "I did it," answered young Lincoln promptly. "I did not mean to do it, but I hung on it"--he was very tall and reached it too easily--"and it broke!" Though lean, he weighed fairly. "I wouldn't have done it if I had 'a' thought it would break."
Other boys of that "class" would have tried to conceal what they did and not own up until obliged to do so. His immediate friends believed that the hatchet and cherry-tree incident in Washington's life traced this truthful course.
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THE LITTLE HATCHET AGAIN TURNS UP.
In his teens Abraham Lincoln, while not considered a man, was able to swing an ax with full power. It was the borderer's multifarious tool and accompanied him everywhere. One time, while sauntering along Gentryville, his stepsister playfully ran at him of a sudden and leaped from behind upon him. Holding on to his shoulders, she dug her knees into his back--a rough trick called fun by these semi-savages--and brought him to the ground. Unfortunately, she caused him to release the ax in his surprise, and it cut her ankle. The boy stopped the wound and bandaged it, while she moaned. Through her cries, he reproached her, and concluded:
"How could you disobey mother so?" for she had been enjoined not to follow her brother. "What are you going to tell her about getting hurt?"
"Tell her I did it with the ax," she replied. "That will be the truth?" she questioned, with the prevarication of her sex inborn.
"Yes, that's the truth, but it is not all the truth. You tell the whole truth."
The mother was forgiving, and nothing more came of the casualty.
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LINCOLN'S WEDDING-SONG.
Abraham Lincoln's own sister Sarah married one Aaron Grigsby, a man in the settlers'