Hero Tales from History — The Kind Heart of Abraham Lincoln
THE KIND HEART OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Little Abe Lincoln lived in a log cabin in Kentucky.
When he was seven, his family moved across the Ohio River into Indiana, and lived all winter in an open shed called a “half-faced camp,” before his father built a better cabin, with bare earth for its floor.
Tom Lincoln, Abe’s father, was “a mighty hunter.
” He liked to shoot game better than the hard work of clearing land and farming.
He thought Abe was timid because he did not like to kill harmless animals or see them suffer.
During the fourteen years Abe lived in southern Indiana, he went to school a few weeks at a time--less than a year in all.
A girl who went to school when he did, used to tell, after she became an old woman, that Abe’s first “composition” was against cruelty to animals.
She always remembered how he read this sentence in it: “An ant’s life is as sweet to it as ours is to us.
” One day Abe caught several lads laughing at a turtle as it moved slowly about, showing, as well as a dumb animal could, the misery it was in.
For there were burning coals on its back, and the biggest boy stood by with a smoking shingle in his hand.
This showed Abe how the hot coals came upon the terrapin’s back.
Snatching the shingle from the big bully’s hand, he brushed them off and began [Illustration: THE BOY LINCOLN READING BY THE FIRELIGHT IN THE LOG CABIN IN WHICH HE WAS BORN.
] to paddle the cruel boy with it, calling him a cowardly fellow for hurting a helpless turtle.
Just before Abe was twenty-one, Father Lincoln moved to newer country in Illinois.
Abe’s step-sisters were now married, so there was a big family going west in a lumbering wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen.
One of the step-sisters took with her a pet dog.
It was in the midst of winter, and some of the rivers they had to cross were covered with ice.
One day the little dog strayed away from the wagon and failed to come back until the Lincoln party had forded a shallow stream.
After crossing, Abe, who was then driving the oxen, saw the poor little fellow jumping about and whining, afraid of being left behind.
It was growing dark and they had to make their camp for the night.
All the others were for leaving the “troublesome cur” to its fate.
Mr. Lincoln, in telling of their moving to Illinois, said of this: “But I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog.
Pulling off shoes and socks, I waded across the stream and triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under my arm.
His frantic leaps of joy and other evidences of a dog’s gratitude amply repaid me for all the exposure I had undergone.
” Many other stories are told of Abraham Lincoln’s kindness of heart.
When he was a country lawyer he had to ride from one county seat to another, attending court.
The judge and several attorneys rode from place to place where court was to be held.
Lawyer Lincoln was the most popular man of them all, because of his good nature and his ready fund of funny stories.
The Illinois roads were then nearly always very dusty or very muddy.
One day their party saw a hog stuck in a deep mudhole, squealing loudly.
The party rode by and laughed at the pig’s plight, but no one took the trouble to help it out.
But those despairing squeals touched the heart of Abraham Lincoln.
He soon fell behind and galloped back to rescue the animal.
Taking several rails from the roadside fence, he used one to pry over, and another to lift the pig out.
By taking care and plenty of time, he managed to place the end of a rail under the hog without hurting it.
The animal was now so weak that this took a long time, and Lawyer Lincoln’s clothes were badly smeared with mud.
At last, when the pig realized that it was free, it started off toward the farmhouse where it belonged, flopping its big ears and grunting gratefully.
Mr. Lincoln did not catch up with his friends until they had arrived at the tavern in the next town.
When they saw his mud-plastered clothes, they all began to laugh, for Lawyer Lincoln did not often have a new suit of clothes.
When they stopped chaffing him about helping his “dear brother” in distress, Lincoln said soberly, “That farmer’s children might have to go barefoot next winter if he lost his hog.
” Another day Lincoln was missing.
One of the party explained, “I saw him an hour ago over the fence in a grove with a young bird screaming in each hand, while he was going around hunting for their nest.
” It took a long time to find it.
Lawyer Lincoln had to let one bird go while he climbed the tree to put the other in its nest.
Then he had to climb up again to put the other bird in.
So it was after dark when he rejoined his friends at the tavern table.
It seemed so absurd for a big man like Lincoln to waste hours on two birds that had fallen out of their nest, that even the judge scolded him.
Mr. Lincoln replied with deep feeling, “Gentlemen, you may laugh, but I could not have slept well to-night if I had not saved those birds.
Their cries would have rung in my ears.
” The spring after he was twenty-one, Abraham Lincoln helped to build a flatboat and went on it to New Orleans to buy stock for a store in the village.
While in the southern city with two companions, he witnessed the sale of a mulatto girl in a slave market.
The sight filled his righteous soul with wrath.
Clenching his fists, he exclaimed: “Boys, let’s get away from this.
If I ever get a chance to _hit that thing_ (slavery) _I’ll hit it hard_!
” So Lawyer Lincoln became the champion of the negro and lifted his voice against slavery.
“This country cannot exist half slave and half free,” he exclaimed.
His ringing words in the famous debates with Senator Douglas pleased the people of the north so much that Lincoln was elected President next time.
Within six weeks after he went to live in the White House, the Civil War broke out.
The tender heart of President Lincoln was often hurt when the news of a battle came to Washington with its list of killed and wounded.
He tried to keep up his own spirits and the heart of the nation by his constant flow of stories which made the people smile through their tears.
To him it was an awful thing for his brothers in the north to be fighting and slaying their brothers down south.
When Abraham Lincoln saw that the time was right, he gave out the Emancipation Proclamation--his order to free four million slaves.
He now had “a chance to hit that thing,” and he did “hit it hard.
” Grand as it was to write that great paper and free all the slaves, it was even greater to show the people of the United States and of the whole world how to look on the bright side of the hardest trials, and even to laugh in the face of trouble.
President Lincoln had the supreme joy of seeing the purpose of the war accomplished.
His Gettysburg Address--which every boy and girl should know by heart--and the words from the Second Inaugural, “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” are ever-living witnesses of the kind heart and unselfish spirit of Abraham Lincoln.
William Cullen Bryant, one of the first of American poets, wrote these lines for the Martyr President’s funeral: “O, slow to smite and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just!
Who in the fear of God didst bear The sword of power, a nation’s trust.
Pure was thy life; its bloody close Has placed thee with the Sons of Light, Among the noble hearts of those Who perished in the cause of Right.
”
