During the years that passed while Abraham was growing from a
child, scarcely able to wield the ax placed in his hands, into a
tall, capable youth, the line of frontier settlements had been
gradually but steadily pushing on beyond Gentryville toward the
Mississippi River. Every summer canvas-covered moving wagons
wound their slow way over new roads into still newer country;
while the older settlers, left behind, watched their progress
with longing eyes. It was almost as if a spell had been cast over
these toil-worn pioneers, making them forget, at sight of such
new ventures, all the hardships they had themselves endured in
subduing the wilderness. At last, on March 1, 1830, when Abraham
was just twenty-one years old, the Lincolns, yielding to this
overmastering frontier impulse to "move" westward, left the old
farm in Indiana to make a new home in Illinois. "Their mode of
conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams," Mr. Lincoln wrote in
1860; "and Abraham drove one of the teams." They settled in Macon
County on the north side of the Sangamon River, about ten miles
west of Decatur, where they built a cabin, made enough rails to
fence ten acres of ground, fenced and cultivated the ground, and
raised a crop of corn upon it that first season. It was the same
heavy labor over again that they had endured when they went from
Kentucky to Indiana; but this time the strength and energy of
young Abraham were at hand to inspire and aid his father, and
there was no miserable shivering year of waiting in a half-faced
camp before the family could be suitably housed.
Pages:
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37