• CHAPTER FIVE •

SQUIRE PATE AND THE LAW

In the early 1820s many new settlers came to settle in the Pigeon Creek neighborhood. Each new family had to clear and fence fields and build a cabin as the Lincolns had done earlier. They needed extra help, but laborers were scarce because each family had work at home. Naturally newcomers noticed the tall, husky Abe Lincoln, and one day as he waited his turn at the mill, two men offered him jobs. He was perhaps fourteen at this time. Abe laughed and told the men that his pappy needed him. More work was the last thing that Abe Lincoln wanted!

Lincoln takes a break from splitting rails.

But as he jogged home he thought over those offers. Work for hire would be work, the same as at home, and he hated it. But work with different people would be a change; since he had to work anyway, why not try it? Figured this way, the idea seemed good. He resolved that if his father was willing, he would hire out.

Only a few days later a nearby farmer asked Thomas Lincoln about hiring Abe. Lincoln eyed his son thoughtfully; the boy had grown more than Lincoln had realized. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have him bring in some money. Of course Abe’s earnings would belong to his father; that was the custom of the time.

“Yes, I reckon Abe kin oblige you soon as the plantin’s done here,” he decided. “Start next Monday, say.”

So Abe began “hiring out.” At first he worked two or three days at a time, staying on a job till a certain task was done, then coming home to chop wood or split rails for his father. He earned sixteen cents a day when he felled trees, split rails, dug wells, and helped build cabins. For hog-butchering and snake killing—which he hated—he got twenty-five cents.

Abe proudly carried his own ax to work. He had carved the handle from hardwood; and the head was sharp and heavy, with a point above and below.

“Seems like I’ve an ax in my hand all the time,” he remarked to Matilda one evening as he set it in a corner. “Be sleepin’ with it next, I reckon!”

His strength and growth developed together, perhaps because he used his muscles constantly. By the time Abe was sixteen he was six feet four inches tall and the way he could swing that ax was a sight to remember! Often a felled tree cracked loudly and split at a stroke. Word of his prowess got around and he had more jobs offered than he could accept.

When Abe worked nearby, Matilda Johnston was allowed to carry his lunch to him. Sometimes, as she came near, she saw him standing on a stump orating. She amused herself by trying to guess what it was he recited—the Declaration of Independence, the sermon of last Sunday, or a chapter from Isaiah. All of these were favorites. Then she would run to him and ask if her guess was right.

Probably Abe’s growing acquaintance helped to draw the Lincoln family into the community, for their life became less lonely. House-raisings, corn huskings, weddings, and funerals brought neighbors together. The Pigeon Creek church, started in 1819, was finally finished; and regular services were well attended. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were members, and Thomas Lincoln had made window and door frames and a handsome pulpit as his contribution.

In the spring of 1824, James Gentry, a well-to-do Kentuckian, bought a thousand acres of land about a mile and a half west of the Lincoln farm. When he built a house and a store, he hired Abe Lincoln to help with building and fencing. As they worked together Abe became a friend of Gentry’s son, Allen. Later Mr. Gentry trusted Abe to clerk in the store, too, when the Gentrys were busy with other work. Clerking, Abe discovered, was nice work. A person could take his ease between customers.

Mr. Gentry was a shrewd business man and soon observed that men liked his clerk. Abe Lincoln had a friendly way and a ready tale. Customers lingered and sometimes made further purchases.

“Stay around awhile! Take your time!” Gentry would invite. “Abe Lincoln will be here in a minute.” To a new man in the county he added, “That boy can make folks laugh over nothing. It isn’t what he says; it’s the way he says it. Get him to tell you how old man Brown got hornswoggled selling hogs.” Men stayed around until Abe went home.

A few months later William Jones came from Vincennes and opened a store a mile beyond Gentry’s. He was quick to hire Abe, and used him when Gentry could spare him. While doing errands for these men, Abe came to know David Turnham—who had a farm near Grand View—and Attorney John Pitcher, of Rockport—a town eighteen miles southwest and on the Ohio River.

As he went about, Abe Lincoln noticed that most families owned books. Turnham and Pitcher had many; usually there were only a few on a shelf. Often Abe was allowed to borrow a book to read evenings. In this way he read Grimshaw’s History of the United States, The Arabian Nights, Weems’s Life of Washington, and others. He carried a book in his breeches pocket, and at the slightest excuse he would stop work and read for a few minutes. This habit annoyed his father.

“Where’s Abe?” Thomas Lincoln always asked when he came into the cabin.

“He went to Turnham’s to borrow a book,” Mrs. Lincoln answered casually one day.

“That boy!” Lincoln cried angrily. “He thinks more of readin’ than workin’. He’s lazy—that’s all! I had a job for him.” He stalked out of the cabin, his face flushed with anger.

Mrs. Lincoln sighed. Such scenes happened often; it was hard to keep peace. But when Abe came in for supper he had no ill feeling, though his father had scolded.

“Pappy didn’t uster fret so,” he said in half apology.

“He’s had his troubles,” Mrs. Lincoln agreed. “A man was here digging again today, but they found no water. Funny, too, with that big marsh so near.”

But a time came when Abe’s learning helped his father. Thomas Lincoln had a deal to sell eighteen acres of his land. Abe happened to be working near when the buyer brought the paper to be signed, and he glanced at the document.

“Want fer me to look hit over, Pappy?” he asked mildly.

Grudgingly, Lincoln handed the bill of sale to his son. Abe read it carefully; his hunch had been right.

“If you sign this paper, Pappy, you’ve given him yer whole farm,” he said. “Did yer aim to do that?”

“Ye mean he’s hornswoggling me!” Lincoln roared. He grabbed the paper and ordered the man off his land. After that Lincoln usually let his son read in peace, though he did not encourage reading or offer to buy a book.

A storm in the night was the means of getting Abe his first book. Josiah Crawford, a new settler, had a small library; while Abe worked for him, helping to build a house and to dig a well, he allowed Abe to borrow books. The evening Abe took home Ramsay’s Life of Washington he read late, and then sleepily tucked the book into a chink between the logs by his bed. A rain blew up and soaked the book; Abe was dismayed when he saw its condition in the morning. Crawford would be furious—and rightly so. Abe took it to his employer immediately. The pages could be dried for reading, but the beauty of the volume was gone.

“Don’t bring such a book to me!” Crawford shouted angrily. “You pull fodder in my cornfield for two days and keep the thing. I never want to see it again.”

Abe pulled Crawford’s fodder, and he was glad to own a book—but it was a long, long time before he had any pleasure in that one.

This reading, the friends he made, and the talk he heard gradually developed Abe Lincoln into a friendly youth who enjoyed new people, mastered good books, and could think on his feet. The years of his teens went by with nothing dramatic to mark them—yet he was growing steadily, as a tree grows season after season. Then in 1825 a new job was offered him, a job that brought him to the Ohio River.

Abe Lincoln was sixteen when James Taylor hired him to work on a farm by Posey’s Landing. Taylor had a farm and a “Bank Store” on the riverbank where Anderson’s Creek joined the Ohio River. Farmers and rivermen were his customers. When the job at Taylor’s ended, Abe worked for other farmers, and then helped Taylor on his flatboat. They poled up and down the river collecting produce to sell. Abe liked this work; the steamboats, flatboats, and rafts filled with travelers fascinated him, and he earned six dollars a month.

In the summer of 1827, Abe built a scow for himself and did errands along the Indiana side of the Ohio. Sometimes he ferried travelers across Anderson’s Creek when the water was high at the ford. He did not go across the Ohio because the Dill brothers, on the Kentucky side, had a ferry license for that work. His scow brought him many new experiences and the pleasure of meeting travelers.

One morning a stranger yelled at Abe when he was poling near the landing.

“Hi, you! See that steamboat comin’? Take me out to ketch ’er!” The man had stepped out on a great log and was waving his bandanna at the boat coming around the bend.

Abe saw that the Dills’ ferry was tied up on the Kentucky bank; the steamboat was coming fast; and the captain signaled that he would stop in midstream, but would not turn to shore. “What ye waitin’ fer?” the traveler complained. “I’ll pay ye!”

Abe poled near. The man and his companion tossed bags aboard, and Abe put them on the steamboat.

“Here’s yer pay!” As the paddles began to turn, the travelers tossed Abe two silver half-dollars.

Abe fingered the coins incredulously. A dollar! Three days of hog butchering would not earn that sum! After that he hung around the landing and made more money this way.

Alas! Unknown to Abe, the Dill brothers plotted to end his good fortune. They met Abe in mid river and pretended to be in trouble.

“Follow me, will ye, Abe?” John Dill begged. “I hain’t sure I kin make it home.” Abe followed them across; but the minute he was on land, John’s brother leaped on him and accused him of stealing their trade. Abe made a quick thrust that knocked the man off and made the brothers change their minds about fighting him.

“We don’t aim to fight,” John said hastily. “In Kentuck’ we go by the law. You come with us to Squire Pate, and he’ll fix you.”

Abe was willing; he didn’t like a fight even when he won. They went to the squire’s cabin nearby and the Dills swore out a warrant for Abe’s arrest.

“Ready for the case, boys?” the squire asked. “Hain’t much use waitin’.”

They were ready. John Dill testified that he and his brother had the ferry license, but Abe Lincoln took passengers to board steamboats.

“The Kentucky line is ‘low water’ by the Indiana shore,” Dill added.

The squire nodded. “Now state yer case,” he told Abe. “They tell the truth,” Abe granted. “But James Taylor says their license is to carry folks across. I only went to the middle of the river. I don’t think I broke a law. Anyway, Squire, captains won’t wait till a boat comes across to pick ’em up, and travelers hate to miss a boat.”

“We’ll see what the law says.” Squire Pate took a book from his shelf, and as he turned pages the Dills observed that he was impressed with Abe’s argument. “The law is plain,” the squire announced. “You Dills have the right ‘to set a person across,’ but the law does not keep an unlicensed boatman from rowing passengers to midstream. The defendant is acquitted.”

After the disappointed Dills left, Abe Lincoln lingered to talk with Squire Pate. “It’s a wonder to me that you kin tell so quick what’s right,” he said.

“No wonder about it,” the squire replied. “That book is The Statutes of Kentucky. Every man ought to know the statutes of his own state—’twould save him trouble. You come agin, son. You’ll pick up a lot of law here. Might come handy some day fer you to know the law of the land.”

Abe thanked the squire and went to his boat. As he crossed over to Taylor’s those words, “the law of the land,” echoed in his mind. They had a familiar sound. He thought of his mammy and their comfortable cabin in Kentucky; it was nearly eleven years since they had crossed this river, nearly nine, since she had died.

“Mammy al’ays wanted me to git eddicated,” he remembered, and a plan shaped in his mind.

The next time he went to Turnham’s he borrowed The Revised Laws of Indiana—a book he had seen on the office shelf. When he had mastered that, he borrowed a law book from Attorney Pitcher at Rockport. And whenever he could, he crossed the river to attend Squire Pate’s monthly court.

But Abe said nothing at all of this at home. His father might not approve of his interest in Squire Pate and the law.