Abraham Lincoln: A Biography

2. Young Man on His Own

CHAPTER II ..Young Man on His Own PAD D LIN G downstream with the current and disembarking at Judy's Ferry, where the village of Riverton now stands, Lincoln, Hanks, and Johnston walked to Springfield to find Offutt. A frontier promoter of grandiose designs and hearty personality, Offutt liked to talk and drink. The most likely place to look for him was Andrew Elliott's Buckhorn Tavern, and there they found him, regaling the customers with his largescale plans for quick riches. But in the gush of his enthusiasm he had failed to provide a boat, so the three men contracted to construct their own at wages of ten dollars a month. At the point where Spring Creek empties its waters into the Sangamon River they built a shanty for lodging, chose Lincoln as cook, and cut timber for their craft from the government land. Bringing the big trees down, they sawed them into logs, which they rafted downriver to Kirkpatrick's mill to be ripped into planks. A visitor remembered seeing Lincoln, stripped to his undershirt and pants and begrimed with sweat, pushing back his clotted hair as he pounded away on the boat. The constructiori took a month. Then, loading their cargo of barreled pork, corn, and live hogs, they cast off downstream, fending off the overhanging branches and steering their clumsy vessel around the snags and shallows. The spring floodwater had receded and the river was low. At the little hamlet of New Salem a mill dam obstructed the stream. The water still flowed over it, 24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN however, and the boatmen believed they could force their craft across. But halfway over it stuck, shipping water at the stern. A crowd of villagers assembled on the shore, generous with advice, but the utmost efforts of the crewmen could not budge the heavy craft. Finally, under Lincoln's direction, the men carried part of the cargo to the riverbank and pushed the rest of it forward to balance the boat. Lincoln went ashore and, borrowing an auger, bored a hole in the overhanging bow to let the water out. Then, having plugged the hole, the boatmen eased their craft across the dam. Offutt, who had accompanied his crewmen on this first stage of their journey, was impressed with Lincoln's ingenuity. He appraised him as a promising young man. The little settlement on the bluff above the mill dam also seemed destined for growth, so Offutt planned to rent the mill and open a store, and he engaged young Lincoln to operate these enterprises when he returned. John Hanks said that on this second visit to New Orleans Lincoln was so distressed by a slave auction that he declared: "If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard." But Hanks's testimony is questionable because he left the party at St. Louis. The deep compassion that Lincoln revealed in later life had not become evident yet. Nor did he suppose himself to be a man of destiny. Doubtless what he saw of slavery repelled him, but we must doubt that he gave such dramatic expression to his distaste at this time of life. Lincoln arrived back in New Salem in late July 1831, "a piece of floating driftwood," as he described himself. On August 1 an election took place in the village, and for the first time Lincoln exercised his right to vote, announcing his choices orally to the clerks of election, who sat behind a table marking their tally sheets. Offutt's stock of goods did not arrive until September, so for a month or more Lincoln helped at the mill and did odd jobs. The village where Lincoln found himself was a thriving place, situated on a high bluff above the Sangamon River. Two little streams had cut deep ravines on each side of the townsite, making access difficult from north and south, but to the west the bluff Young Man on His Own 25 broadened and flattened to merge with the level prairie. Across the river to the east, thick woods covered hills and bottom land. At the height of New Salem's prosperity, which came two years after Lincoln's arrival, the village had a population of about twenty-five families. It boasted a cooper, a cobbler, a wheelwright and cabinetmaker, a blacksmith, a hatter, two physicians, a tavern, a carding machine for wool, two...